Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. U.S. Forest Service

The federal district court for the Eastern District of Washington vacated a finding of no significant impact issued under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by the U.S. Forest Service for a timber treatment project in the Colville National Forest. The court found that “the maps identifying areas for commercial timber harvesting are too vague to ensure a hard look at the impact of harvesting and public comment.” The court rejected the plaintiff’s other arguments. The decision did not explicitly address the complaint’s allegations regarding the Forest Service’s failure to take a hard look at the project’s impacts on climate change and the potential impacts of climate change on the project.

Alliance for the Wild Rockies challenged the U.S. Forest Service’s decisions to proceed with a project that would open 36,400 acres of the Colville National Forest to commercial logging, pre-commercial logging, and burning. The complaint alleged that the Forest Service failed to take a hard look at the project’s impacts, including its contributions to climate change, and that the Forest Service failed to examine the reasonably foreseeable impacts that climate change would have on the project. Other alleged shortcomings in the environmental analysis related to climate change included failure “to perform sufficient analysis of … direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts on Forest vegetation, including old-growth and snag structures that furnish unique habitat for many species and help to mitigate climate change.” The complaint asserted violations of the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.