Southeast Alaska Conservation Council v. United States Forest Service

Big Thorne is a logging project in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The United States Forest Service approved the logging to help revive the lackluster economy of southeastern Alaska. But the project has been met with howls of protest from the plaintiffs in this case, who claim that Big Thorne unlawfully damages the habitat of an indigenous wolf. The district court dismissed all challenges, and we must now decide whether the Forest Service violated the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) by approving either the Big Thorne project or the 2008 Tongass Forest Plan (Forest Plan) under which Big Thorne was authorized.

FACTS

Big Thorne allows timber to be harvested from Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island. The island, which is the size of Delaware, is the largest in a chain that makes up Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago. Like most of the archipelago, Prince of Wales Island is covered in old-growth rainforest. Big Thorne authorizes logging on nearly 6,200 acres and the construction of more than 80 miles of roads.

Logging and road construction will trench on the habitat of the Alexander Archipelago wolf. This rare wolf preys on a species of deer that thrives in the old-growth…

dissenting in part:

I dissent from the portion of the majority’s discussion of the issues relating to the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), and concur in the court’s reasoning concerning the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Hence I join in full both the judgment and the reasoning of the court as presented in the memorandum disposition filed concurrently with the published opinion. But I regret I cannot fully join the NFMA analysis, and hence I respectfully dissent in part.

Addressing the NFMA issues, that statute explicitly serves up for agency action a catalog of potential competing uses of the forest. The agency administering NFMA, the United States Forest Service (Forest Service), is explicitly to consider managing the forests having in mind environmental considerations but also economic considerations. See Native Ecosystems Council v. Weldon, 697 F.3d 1043, 1056 (9th Cir. 2012) (“Forest plans are designed to manage forest resources by balancing the eon-sideration of environmental and economic factors.”); 16 U.S.C. § 1604 . One purpose of the NFMA is to encourage conservation of natural resources in our national forests. But another purpose is to support a…