Swomley v. Schroyer

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) claims against the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a timber project in the White River National Forest. The Tenth Circuit found that dismissal of claims that the Forest Service failed to adequately consider the project’s climate change impacts was warranted because the petitioners failed to cite the administrative record—they instead relied on extra-record materials including advocacy group websites and Wikipedia articles about wildfires. The Tenth Circuit also rejected claims that an environmental impact statement was required either because the failure to consider potential climate impacts was controversial (or the project itself was controversial) or because the project left “considerable uncertainty” about the project’s impacts, including effects on climate change.

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The federal district court for the District of Colorado upheld the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a timber project authorizing logging on 1,631 acres in the White River National Forest in Colorado. The court rejected three claims under the National Environmental Policy Act, including an argument that the Forest Service failed to consider foreseeable greenhouse gas emissions and the project’s indirect and cumulative effect on global warming. The court found that the petitioners did not show that emissions from the project—which the court characterized as a “relatively small timber and biomass project”—would likely result in a cumulatively significant impact. The court distinguished this case from other cases in which consideration of emissions was required, indicating that in those cases “the significance of emissions was often beyond doubt.”

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