Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Forest Service

Rejecting in part a magistrate judge’s recommendation, the federal district court for the District of Montana found that the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to comply with NEPA, the National Forest Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act in the review of a forest treatment project in the Custer Gallatin National Forest. The court vacated and remanded the environmental assessment and decision notice issued by the Forest Service. The court rejected, however, the plaintiffs’ argument under NEPA that the Forest Service failed to adequately address the cumulative impacts of climate change. The court noted that the Forest Service concluded—based on a project-level carbon analysis that was “tiered” to a 2022 programmatic analysis of carbon sequestration for the Custer Gallatin National Forest Land Management Plan—that the project would result in a short-term release of carbon but would over the long term increase carbon storage and reduce emissions. The court found that the Forest Service’s consideration of cumulative climate change effects was adequate “[g]iven the nature of this Project and the recency and scope of the tiered analysis.”

In a findings and recommendation issued on March 31, 2025, a magistrate judge in the federal district court for the District of Montana recommended that the court grant summary judgment to the U.S. Forest Service and other defendants on claims that approvals for the South Plateau Landscape Area Treatment Project in the Custer Gallatin National Forest violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other laws. The project authorized 5,551 acres of clearcut harvest, 6,593 acres of commercial thinning, and 2,514 acres of non-commercial thinning in a 39,909-acre project area over 15 years. Under NEPA, the magistrate rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the Forest Service failed to take a hard look at climate-related impacts. The magistrate concluded that this case could be distinguished from a 2023 District of Montana <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/center-for-biological-diversity-v-us-forest-service/">decision</a> in which the court found that the Forest Service’s consideration of impacts on carbon emissions failed to meet NEPA’s standards. The magistrate acknowledged factual similarities to the earlier case, but said that in this case the plaintiffs failed to show that the Forest Service borrowed “cookie-cutter” analysis of climate impacts from analyses of another forest. The magistrate also found that the plaintiffs failed to show that the Forest Service’s conclusion “that active management of the Forest might lead to a healthier forest, able to sequester carbon in the future” was unscientific. The magistrate also found that the plaintiffs did not rebut the quantitative carbon emissions analysis in the Custer Gallatin National Forest Plan environmental impact statement (EIS) that underlay the decision to prepare only a qualitative climate change analysis for the project. The EIS concluded that even maximum potential management levels “would have a negligible impact on national and global emissions and on forest carbon stocks.”

Three environmental groups filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Montana to block the U.S. Forest Service from moving forward with a commercial logging project in the Custer Gallatin National Forest. The groups alleged that the approved project authorized clearcutting on more than 5,500 acres and commercial logging on another 6,600 acres of mature forests, as well as 56 miles of roads. They asserted that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Forest Management Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Under NEPA, the plaintiffs alleged a failure to disclose the project’s climate change impacts, including impacts on carbon storage and sequestration, as well as the potential climate impacts of project implementation, such as the use of fossil fuel engines to build roads, cut trees, and remove and transport cut logs. The plaintiffs alleged that “[t]he Forest Service dismissed the impacts of logging these mature forests as ‘infinitesimal,’ ignoring years of science and agency guidance.”