Salazar

Arizona Cattle Growers’ Association (“Arizona Cattle”) appeals from the district court’s grant of summary judgment rejecting its challenge to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s (“FWS”) designation of critical habitat for the Mexican Spotted Owl. Arizona Cattle argues that the FWS unlawfully designated areas containing no owls as “occupied” habitat and that the FWS calculated the economic impacts of the designation by applying an impermissible “baseline” approach. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

*1162 I. BACKGROUND

A. Litigation History

In 1993 the Mexican Spotted Owl was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The listing decision prompted a series of lawsuits alternately seeking to compel the FWS to designate critical habitat for the owl and, following the FWS’s designation of habitat, attacking that designation.

The first such lawsuit was in 1995 to compel the FWS to designate critical habitat and resulted in the FWS’s issuing a final rule designating 4.6 million acres of critical owl habitat, a designation that was quickly challenged in court and then revoked in 1998. After another lawsuit was…