Chattooga Conservancy v. U.S. Department of Agriculture

The federal district court for the District of Columbia rejected plaintiffs’ claim that the U.S. Forest Service’s environmental reviews of three timber projects failed to properly weigh cumulative carbon emissions. The projects were located in Missouri, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Citing the Supreme Court’s clarification in <a href="https://www.climatecasechart.com/collections/seven-county-infrastructure-coalition-v-eagle-county_f6b1f2">Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County</a> regarding the “substantial deference” due to agencies’ decisions in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, the court declined to “second-guess” or “micromanage” choices the Forest Service made in its reviews of the timber projects, including “decisions on which projects are relevant” for a cumulative effects analysis and “how to measure and contextualize the anticipated cumulative effects.” The court found that the environmental review documents, “[r]ead together, … establish that the agency considered the cumulative carbon-emitting effects of the project but concluded that the overall effects would not be negative.” The court also ruled that the setting of annual timber targets was not a discrete final agency action subject to review under the Administrative Procedure Act.

A lawsuit filed in federal district court in the District of Columbia challenged the U.S. Forest Service’s alleged failure to account for the aggregate carbon effects of actions taken each year to fulfill annual “timber targets,” which the plaintiffs described as “mandatory performance metrics” that “drive logging levels on the National Forest System.” The plaintiffs—two environmental groups and a resident of Missouri—alleged that the failure to consider the impacts of national, regional, and unit-specific timber targets violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). They also alleged that project-level analyses for projects in Sumter National Forest, Nantahala National Forest, and Mark Twain National Forest violated NEPA and asked the court to enjoin the Forest Service from proceeding with the remaining commercial timber-harvest portions of these projects until it complies with NEPA. They also requested that the court enjoin the Forest Service from offering additional timber sales to fulfill fiscal year 2024 timber targets for Regions 8 and 9. The complaint alleged that failure to consider cumulative carbon emissions disproportionately affects forests in the East and the South because the volumetric timber targets incentivized logging in the most carbon-dense forests.