Idaho Conservation League v. U.S. Forest Service

Idaho Conservation League filed a lawsuit in federal court in Idaho challenging federal approvals of the Sage Hen Integrated Restoration Project in the Boise National Forest. The plaintiff asserted that the approvals of the project—which it described as a “twenty-year, landscape-scale project that includes extensive logging, prescribed burns, and road construction on public lands”—violated NEPA, the National Forest Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The claims included allegations related to defects in the consideration of climate change in the biological opinion for bull trout. First, the complaint alleged that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) “dismissed any synergistic effects the Project will have with climate change and other cumulative effects that are already harming bull trout” by assuming the project would last only 10 years (instead of the 20-year timeframe identified by the U.S. Forest Service). Second, the complaint alleged that the FWS ignored information regarding potential climate change and other cumulative effects even over the next 10 years.