Alaska Oil & Gas Association v. Ross

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court decision that vacated the listing of the Arctic ringed seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In an unpublished decision, the Ninth Circuit said its 2016 opinion reversing a district court’s striking down of the listing of the bearded seal adjudicated the same issues and was the controlling law of the circuit. As in that case, the Ninth Circuit found that the National Marine Fisheries Service’s finding that the Arctic ringed seal was likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future due to their reliance on sea ice was reasonable and supported by the record. The court said it was not arbitrary or capricious to rely on climate change models that projected through 2100. The Ninth Circuit also said the district court had misapplied Section 4 of the ESA by requiring quantitative data that was not available to pinpoint an extinction threshold.

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Three briefs were filed defending an Alaska district court’s decision vacating the listing of the Arctic ringed seal as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Two of the briefs—filed by oil and gas trade groups and Alaska Native regional corporations and tribal governments—focused on the argument that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) had unlawfully relied on speculative and unreliable evidence that loss of sea ice would bring the ringed seal to the brink of extinction by the end of the century. These two briefs also asserted that the Ninth Circuit’s decision in a similar case reinstating the listing of the bearded seal as threatened was not controlling. The third brief, which the State of Alaska submitted, argued that the NMFS had not adequately considered or responded to State agency comments and submissions.

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