Cascadia Wildlands v. Adcock

A magistrate judge in the federal district court for the District of Oregon recommended that the court determine that conservation groups had standing to challenge the Siuslaw Harvest Land Base Landscape Plan Environmental Assessment and that the challenge was ripe. The Landscape Plan was a programmatic document prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that would authorize logging within a 13,225-acre area. The conservation groups alleged that the defendants violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), including by failing to give “in-depth consideration” to the project’s impacts on carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions and by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement. The magistrate judge found that the conservation groups had demonstrated that their members had concrete interests in the entire 13,225-acre area. The magistrate also concluded that the groups’ procedural NEPA claims were ripe pursuant to Ninth Circuit precedent that “unambiguously regards such challenges as ripe as soon as the alleged procedural failure occurs.”

Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Oregon challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) approval of the plan for “a multi-decade series of logging projects on 13,225 acres of BLM-administered lands in Lane County west of Eugene, Oregon.” The plaintiffs asserted claims under the National Environmental Policy Act. Their specific allegations included that BLM “gave no in-depth consideration” to the project’s impacts on carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions and other areas of concern.