Friends of Cedar Mesa v. Department of the Interior

A conservation nonprofit organization filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Columbia alleging that federal defendants’ approval of oil and gas leases in southeastern Utah failed to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act, NEPA, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Endangered Species Act. The organization’s NEPA allegations included that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management “utterly ignored the cumulative impacts of climate change on cultural resource degradation,” citing public comments, including by the plaintiff, that “climate change trends will impact both exposed and buried cultural resources by increasing erosion, flooding, dust deposition, wildfire, and thermal stress—all of which are known to deteriorate cultural resources.” The complaint alleged that BLM failed to acknowledge or study these impacts in either a March 2018 environmental assessment (EA) or a 2021 supplemental EA prepared in response to a July 2019 court decision finding that BLM did not adequately consider greenhouse gas impacts in its review of oil and gas leases in Wyoming.