Center for Biological Diversity v. Department of Fish & Wildlife

Facing for the first time a requirement to review for environmental impacts its statutorily mandated fish hatchery and stocking enterprise that has been in operation for more than 100 years, California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife (the Department) chose to use a program environmental impact report (EIR) to analyze the enterprise’s impacts on a statewide basis. Instead of addressing impacts on specific locations the Department stocked, the EIR addressed the enterprise’s continuing and potential impacts on individual species that could be located at many locations. The EIR formulated, and the Department adopted, protocols and plans for discovering site-specific impacts at each of the nearly 1,000 water bodies the Department stocks and the 24 hatcheries it oversees, and it committed to mitigating the impacts discovered from those reviews. If, through using the protocols, the Department discovered impacts that were not addressed in the EIR, the Department committed to review and mitigate those impacts as required by environmental law. The Department addressed unavoidable impacts in a statement of overriding considerations.

Because the stocking and hatchery enterprise…