Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management

The federal district court for the Northern District of California issued a decision on the remedy to address violations of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act in connection with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) designation of a route network for off-highway vehicles (OHVs) in the West Mojave Desert. The violations identified in the court’s October 2024 ruling included that BLM failed to analyze the greenhouse gas impacts among alternatives. The court granted the plaintiffs’ request for partial vacatur of the route network, finding that closure of desert tortoise critical habitat to OHVs was appropriate. The court remanded and vacated or partially vacated the record of decision, biological opinion, and incidental take statement for further proceedings.

The federal district court for the Northern District of California ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) approval of land management plans designating route networks for off-highway vehicles (OHVs) in the Western Mojave Desert did not comply with the Endangered Species Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and NEPA in some respects. Among the claims addressed by the court were challenges to the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions in the final supplemental environmental impact statement. The court rejected a contention that BLM excluded greenhouse gases from its air quality report, finding that the report did address greenhouse gases and only excluded greenhouse gases not attributable to the OHV route network. The court also found that BLM appropriately incorporated climate modeling for a broader area that included the Western Mojave planning area. The court agreed with the plaintiffs, however, that BLM failed to analyze greenhouse gas impacts among alternatives. The court also found that a “no population growth” assumption that impacted the greenhouse gas analysis was unsupported and arbitrary and capricious.

Center for Biological Diversity and five other organizations filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Northern District of California asserting that federal defendants failed to comply with NEPA, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act in their management of the West Mojave Planning Area of the California Desert Conservation Area. The actions challenged by the plaintiffs included adoption of the “Route Network Project” that increased the number of miles designated for off-highway vehicle use and approval of continued livestock grazing within Desert Tortoise critical habitat. The plaintiffs’ allegations included that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service incompletely assessed cumulative effects, especially the impacts of climate change, in a 2015 biological assessment, and that a 2019 biological opinion failed to accurately assess whether the action, taken together with cumulative effects (including climate change), was likely to jeopardize the continued existence of listed species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat. The plaintiffs said this assessment should have included a “tipping point analysis.” They also alleged a failure to utilize “the best available scientific and commercial data to assess the current status and trend of the species in the face of climate change.”