Cottonwood Environmental Law Center v. Marten

A conservation group filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Montana asserting that the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to prepare supplemental NEPA analysis in light of new scientific information regarding climate change. The plaintiffs alleged that the Forest Service approved a watershed project and a forest health project based on an environmental impact statement for a 1987 forest plan.

In an unpublished decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit that alleged that the U.S. Forest Service should have supplemented the environmental impact statement for the 1987 Gallatin Forest Plan after the Forest Service amended its regulations in 2012 to recognize that climate change necessitated updates to forest plans. Although the Ninth Circuit did not agree that the Forest Service’s completion of a revised forest plan in February 2022 mooted this claim, the court agreed with the Forest Service that the 1987 plan was not “ongoing major Federal action” pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Supplemental NEPA analysis therefore was not required. The Ninth Circuit also rejected arguments that recent events, including the Forest Service’s decision to revise the forest plan, required supplemental NEPA analysis for three ongoing logging projects.