US Fish and Wildlife

Challenge to Forest Service grazing management in Fossil Creek Range allotment of the Coconino National Forest in central Arizona, which is harming habitat for the threatened Chiricahua leopard frog, Yuma clapper rail, Southwestern willow flycatcher and other imperiled species. The grazing also impairs wilderness values of the Fossil Springs and Mazatzal Wilderness Areas by causing soil erosion in steep slopes and degrading riparian habitats.

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Fossil Creek Complaint

Fossil Creek Decision

The Pahsimeroi Valley contains key habitat for three species of Endangered Species Act-listed fish: bull trout, chinook salmon, and steelhead. Yet BLM and Forest Service have not conducted monitoring and habitat improvements as required by their own ESA consultation, which is now very outdated. Their failure to meet fish habitat requirements or to consult over changed conditions violates the ESA, and perpetuates degraded habitat conditions in the Pahsimeroi.

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ESA Complaint

opening summary judgment brief

Slickspot peppergrass is a rare desert flower found only in portions of southwestern Idaho.  Most known populations have been lost in recent decades due to impacts of livestock grazing, off-road vehicles, and other habitat degradation.  The US Fish and Wildlife Service has recognized that slickspot peppergrass thus deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act, issuing a proposed listing rule in 2002.

ESA listing case, challenging US Fish and Wildlife Service's "90-day finding" rejecting WWP's listing petition for pygmy rabbit -- the word's tiniest bunny. 

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Pygmy rabbit ruling

Mountain caribou are found in the US only in the Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho and Washington, and are among the most critically endangered mammals in the lower 48 states.  The caribou feed on lichen in old growth forests to survive the winter, and are easily startled by motorized vehicles -- which displace them from their winter refugia, reducing their survival and reproductive success.

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Court Findings and Conclusions

Map of Areas closed for Caribou

Interior Mountain Quail were once abundant across the sagebrush-steppe, but are now reduced to a few populations in Oregon, Nevada and Idaho; and remaining populations are threatened by habitat destruction from grazing and other impacts.  

Greater sage-grouse are an "umbrella" species for the sagebrush ecosystem, that once covered 155 million acres of western US and Canada. Sage-grouse populations have declined steeply as sagebrush has been destroyed and fragmented by agricultural conversions, livestock grazing, energy development, weed invasions, and other impacts. This case challenged a January 2005 determination by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that listing sage- grouse as endangered or threatened was “not warranted” under the ESA.

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December 2007 decision