Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05259/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05259-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 893
Nature of Suit: Environmental Matters
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 19, 2016 Decided March 8, 2016 

No. 14-5259 

ARK INITIATIVE, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

v. 

THOMAS L. TIDWELL, CHIEF, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:14-cv-00633) 

William S. Eubanks II argued the cause for appellants. 

With him on the briefs was Eric R. Glitzenstein. 

James Maysonett, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for federal appellees. With him on the brief 

was John C. Cruden, Assistant Attorney General. Katherine 

J. Barton, Attorney, entered an appearance. 

Ezekiel J. Williams and Steven K. Imig were on the brief 

for intervenor-appellee Aspen Skiing Company. 

 Cynthia H. Coffman, Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General for the State of Colorado, Federick R. 

Yarger, Solicitor General, Casey A. Shpall, Deputy Attorney 

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General, and Scott Steinbrecher, Assistant Solicitor General, 

were on the brief for amicus curiae the State of Colorado in 

support of appellee. 

John M. Bowlin and David S. Neslin were on the brief for 

amicus curiae Colorado Ski Country USA, Inc. in support of 

defendant-appellees and intervenor-appellee. 

Before: BROWN, KAVANAUGH and PILLARD, Circuit 

Judges.

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD. 

PILLARD, Circuit Judge: The U.S. Forest Service in the 

Department of Agriculture generally prohibits road building 

and timber cutting on its inventoried “roadless” national forest 

lands. Responding to a petition by the State of Colorado, in 

2012 the Service promulgated a rule adopting State-specific 

standards for the designation and management of the 

inventoried roadless areas within Colorado’s borders. Special 

Areas; Roadless Area Conservation; Applicability to the 

National Forests in Colorado (2012 Colorado Rule), 77 Fed. 

Reg. 39,576 (July 3, 2012) (codified at 36 C.F.R. §§ 294.40-

294.49). At issue in this case is the 2012 Colorado Rule’s 

exclusion from the 4.2 million acres of inventoried roadless 

land in Colorado of about 8,300 acres of land that the Service 

also has designated for recreational skiing. The practical 

effect of the decision is to exempt that skiing acreage from the 

Service’s ban against road building and timber cutting on 

roadless lands, although any such developments remain 

subject to environmental review under the National 

Environmental Policy Act. 

The plaintiffs—environmental organizations and two 

individuals—challenge the Service’s application of the 2012 

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Colorado Rule to allow development of a proposed egress ski 

trail on once-roadless land within the Special Use Permit 

boundary for the Snowmass Ski Resort in Aspen. The 

proposed trail is not a paved road, but a trail approximately 

3,000 feet long and averaging 35 feet wide that would require 

some spot grading and tree and brush cutting to make it 

usable by skiers and emergency-response patrollers and to 

open part of it to grooming vehicles. Plaintiffs contend that 

the Service adopted the ski-area exclusion with reference to 

factors other than the on-the-ground, undeveloped condition 

of the 8,300 affected acres, thereby deviating from its own 

established policy without sufficient explanation. The 

plaintiffs also claim that the Service gave them insufficient 

notice of the rulemaking. The District Court disagreed, 

concluding that the Service offered ample reasons for its 

decision to exclude existing designated ski areas from the 

Colorado roadless inventory, and that the Service’s six-year 

public rulemaking process satisfied all applicable notice 

requirements. See Ark Initiative v. Tidwell, 64 F. Supp. 3d 81 

(D.D.C. 2014). Because we agree that the Service adequately 

explained the limited ski-area exclusion and did not violate 

any applicable notice requirements, we affirm. 

I. 

A. 

The Service generally manages its national forest lands 

for multiple uses, as authorized by a layered set of national 

forest management laws reaching back more than a century. 

See generally Wyoming v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 661 F.3d 

1209, 1221-22 (10th Cir. 2011); Montanans for Multiple Use 

v. Barbouletos, 568 F.3d 225, 226-27 (D.C. Cir. 2009). The 

Organic Administration Act of 1897, 16 U.S.C. §§ 473 et 

seq., requires the Service to manage national forests to secure 

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favorable conditions of water flows and to furnish the nation 

with a continuous supply of timber, id. § 475. The 1960 

Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 528 et seq., 

adds “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and 

wildlife and fish purposes” to the list of the Service’s 

objectives for forest land management, id. § 528, and 

specifies that renewable surface resources must be 

administered “for multiple use and sustained yield,” id. § 529. 

To serve those goals, the National Forest Management Act of 

1976, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1600 et seq., requires the Service to 

develop land and resource management plans, also called 

forest plans, which, much like zoning restrictions, designate 

certain areas of national forest lands for specified uses, id.

§ 1604(a), (e)(1). The Service also may issue permits for 

development within national forests pursuant to various 

authorities, consistent with governing forest plans. Id.

§ 1604(i). As relevant here, under the National Forest Ski 

Area Permit Act of 1986, 16 U.S.C. § 497b, the Service issues 

long-term special-use permits for skiing and other recreational 

activities on lands within the National Forest System. 

Approximately 6,600 acres of land at issue in this case were 

covered by special-use ski-area permits, with the remaining 

1,700 excluded acres designated for skiing under forest plans.

Some national forest lands are subject to especially 

stringent management constraints. In 1964, Congress passed 

the Wilderness Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1131 et seq., obligating the 

Service to review “primitive” lands in the National Forest 

System to determine their suitability for preservation as 

“wilderness,” id.§ 1132(b)-(c), a designation that carries with 

it strict development and use prohibitions for permanent 

protection of an area’s “recreational, scenic, scientific, 

educational, conservation, and historical use,” id. § 1133(b). 

In the 1970s, the Forest Service completed its Roadless Area 

Review and Evaluation project to fulfill the Wilderness Act’s 

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mandate that it inventory extensive primitive areas of federal 

lands potentially suitable for congressional wilderness 

designation. See Wyoming, 661 F.3d at 1221-22. As a result 

of that effort and the wilderness designations included in the 

Wilderness Act itself, see 16 U.S.C. § 1132(a), Congress has 

designated approximately 35 million acres as wilderness 

lands, see Wyoming, 661 F.3d at 1222. 

The Service by 2001 had inventoried as “roadless” 58.5 

million acres of relatively undisturbed land nationwide that 

did not make the congressional wilderness-designation cut, an 

area constituting about a third of national forest lands and 2% 

of the land mass of the continental United States. See id. at 

1222, 1225; Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation 

(2001 Roadless Rule), 66 Fed. Reg. 3244, 3245-46 (Jan. 12, 

2001). Before 2001, the Service regulated those inventoried 

roadless areas under governing forest plans, dictating their use 

and development on a local, “site-specific basis,” with no 

nationwide management standards. Wyoming, 661 F.3d at 

1222; see 66 Fed. Reg. at 3246. During that time, 

roadbuilding degraded approximately 2.8 million acres of 

inventoried roadless areas. 66 Fed. Reg. at 3246. 

Concerned about further degradation, the Service 

promulgated the 2001 Roadless Rule, a national roadless 

policy that looked at “the ‘whole picture’ regarding the 

management of the National Forest System.” Id. at 3246. 

Subject to preexisting permits, the 2001 Roadless Rule 

generally “prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and 

timber harvest in inventoried roadless areas because [those 

activities] have the greatest likelihood of altering and 

fragmenting landscapes, resulting in immediate, long-term 

loss of roadless area values and characteristics.” Id. at 3244. 

By “roadless area characteristics,” the Service refers not only 

to the absence of roads as such, but also to beneficial 

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environmental features typical of roadless areas or otherwise 

relatively undisturbed forest lands, such as high-quality and 

undisturbed soil, water, and air; plant and animal diversity 

and habitat for various sensitive categories of species; and 

scenic and cultural properties. See id. at 3245. 

In 2005, the Service again changed course, shifting to a 

state-centered regime for managing roadless areas by inviting 

states to petition for federal approval of state-specific 

management approaches to inventoried roadless lands within 

their borders. See Special Areas; State Petitions for 

Inventoried Roadless Area Management (State Petitions 

Rule), 70 Fed. Reg. 25,654 (May 13, 2005). The State 

Petitions Rule was short-lived. In response to challenges by a 

handful of Western states and many environmental 

organizations, the Ninth Circuit sustained a district court 

order enjoining the State Petitions Rule because it had been 

adopted without the requisite environmental analysis under 

the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 

§§ 4321 et seq., as enforced through the Administrative 

Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. §§ 701 et seq., and without 

consultation about potential effects on endangered species as 

required by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 16 U.S.C. 

§§ 1531 et seq. See Cal. ex rel. Lockyer v. U.S. Dep’t of 

Agric., 575 F.3d 999, 1011-19 (9th Cir. 2009), aff’ing Cal. ex 

rel. Lockyer v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 459 F. Supp. 2d 874 

(N.D. Cal. 2006). The court order reinstated the 2001 

Roadless Rule that had previously been in force nationwide. 

See id. at 1019-21. 

By that time, however, the State of Colorado already had 

seized the opportunity to request federal approval of 

management of its 4.2 million acres of roadless areas in a 

manner tailored to state needs. The State created a bipartisan 

task force in 2005 to compile recommendations for a 

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Colorado-specific roadless-area management rule. In 2006, 

Colorado filed a petition for rulemaking with the Service. By 

the time Colorado filed its petition, the Ninth Circuit had 

struck down the State Petitions Rule and reinstated the 2001 

Roadless Rule, Cal. ex rel. Lockyer, 575 F.3d at 1020-21, but 

Colorado submitted its rulemaking petition under both the 

State Petitions Rule, in the event it was later reinstated, and 

section 553(e) of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 

§ 553(e), in case the State Petitions Rule remained invalid, as 

it has to date. Colorado’s petition requested, as relevant here, 

a roadless area “boundary adjustment” to eliminate a 

relatively small area of overlap of designated ski areas and 

roadless lands by excluding those overlapping portions from 

roadless inventory. Colorado Roadless Petition (2006) at 7, 

17, J.A. 232, 242. 

After a lengthy rulemaking process involving numerous 

layers of environmental review, broad public participation, 

and consideration of four alternatives, the Service 

promulgated the 2012 Colorado Rule. Special Areas; 

Roadless Area Conservation; Applicability to the National 

Forests in Colorado, 77 Fed. Reg. 39,576 (July 3, 2012). The 

2012 Colorado Rule emphasized the need to “provide for the 

conservation and management of roadless area 

characteristics,” especially from tree cutting or removal and 

road construction, but also revised the inventory and 

management of roadless lands in Colorado based on 

Colorado’s representation that “flexibility is needed to 

accommodate State-specific situations and concerns in 

Colorado’s roadless areas.” Id. at 39,577. The 2012 

Colorado Rule displaces for that State the nationwide 2001 

Roadless Rule. 1 See 36 C.F.R. § 294.48(g).

 

1

 Idaho is the only other State subject to a state-specific roadless 

rule. See Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation; Applicability 

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In some ways, the 2012 Colorado Rule is more protective 

than the national rule. For example, it adds 409,500 new 

acres to the Colorado roadless inventory, 77 Fed. Reg. at 

39,577, and designates more than a million acres of 

inventoried roadless areas as “upper-tier” roadless lands 

subject to more stringent restrictions on roadbuilding, tree 

cutting, and linear construction (such as power and 

telecommunication lines) than the national rule imposes, see

36 C.F.R. §§ 294.42(b), 294.43(b), 249.44(b); 77 Fed. Reg. at 

39,577-78. The Service explicitly included those features “to 

offset the limited exceptions for Colorado-specific concerns 

so that the final rule is more protective than the 2001 

Roadless Rule.” 77 Fed. Reg. at 39,578. 

The 2012 Colorado Rule has other, less protective 

features. For example, it makes certain exceptions from its 

road-building and timber-cutting prohibitions to facilitate 

wildfire management, see 36 C.F.R. §§ 294.42(c)(1)-(2), 

294.43(c)(1)(vi)-(vii), and removes from the roadless 

inventory 459,100 acres the Service “determined to be 

substantially altered,” 77 Fed. Reg. at 39,577-78. As 

pertinent here, and as requested by the State, the 2012 

Colorado Rule also removed from the roadless inventory 

approximately 8,300 acres of land the Service already had 

designated “for ski area management” through special-use 

permits or forest plans. Id.at 39,578.

The Service explained in the preamble to the final rule its 

reasons for adopting the ski-area exclusion—the centerpiece 

of this case. Id. According to the Service, the twenty-two ski 

areas located in part on public lands managed by the Service 

“received about 11.7 million skier visits during the 2010-2011 

 

to the National Forests in Idaho, 73 Fed. Reg. 61,456 (Oct. 16, 

2008); see also Jayne v. Sherman, 706 F.3d 994 (9th Cir. 2013).

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ski season” and “Colorado skiers spend about $2.6 billion 

annually, about one third of the annual tourist dollars spent in 

the State.” Id. The Service noted that the existing roadless 

inventory encompassed lands within parts of thirteen ski areas 

that also fall within a permit boundary (about 6,600 acres) or 

an area that a forest plan allocates for management as a ski 

area (about 1,700 acres). Id. at 39,578, 39,594. Those 8,300 

acres amount to less than 0.2% of Colorado’s inventoried 

roadless areas. Id. at 39,578. The Service also asserted that 

the 8,300 acres at issue here “include[] roadless acres with 

degraded roadless area characteristics due to the proximity to 

a major recreational development.” Id. The ski-area 

exclusion, the Service reasoned, “will ensure future ski area 

expansions within existing permit boundaries and forest plan 

allocations are not in conflict with desired conditions 

provided through the final rule and address one of the Statespecific concerns” Colorado identified. Id. The Service 

emphasized, however, that the 2012 Colorado Rule does not 

constitute approval of any future ski-area expansions; such 

expansions remain subject to “site-specific environmental 

analysis, appropriate public input, and independent approval.” 

Id. 

B. 

In 2003, Intervenor Aspen Skiing Company sought 

permission from the Service to construct a trail for skier 

egress from Burnt Mountain, the easternmost portion of the 

Snowmass Ski Resort. The Company sought to build the 

egress trail across part of an eighty-acre portion of Burnt 

Mountain that the Service previously had inventoried as 

roadless. Plaintiff Ark Initiative challenged the Service’s 

Environmental Assessment for that project under NEPA and 

prevailed before the agency on the ground that the assessment 

failed to analyze the project’s anticipated impact on the area’s 

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roadless characteristics. In August 2013, after promulgating 

the 2012 Colorado Rule, the Service completed a new 

Environmental Assessment for the proposed Burnt Mountain 

trail. The Service explained that the 2012 Colorado Rule had 

removed the roadless designation from the acreage at issue 

because it was within the boundaries of an existing ski-permit 

area, but nonetheless considered whether the trail would 

affect the area’s roadless characteristics and determined that it 

would not. See Snowmass Ski Area Environmental 

Assessment for the Burnt Mountain Egress Trail (Aug. 2013) 

at 3-18 to 3-20, J.A. 675-77. In particular, the Service 

determined that other applicable standards and guidelines 

adequately would protect the area’s soil, water, and air 

resources, and its plant and animal diversity, among other 

features. In September 2013, the Service approved the egress 

trail project, concluding that the Environmental Assessment 

sufficed, so no Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was 

warranted, and again noting that the area at issue is no longer 

“located in [a] designated inventoried roadless area.” 2 Burnt 

Mountain Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant 

Impact (Sept. 2013) at RTC-5, J.A. 759. Ark appealed that 

decision within the agency, and the Service affirmed.

Ark Initiative and another environmental organization, 

Rocky Mountain Wild, and two individual plaintiffs who 

frequent Burnt Mountain to enjoy its aesthetic and 

recreational qualities (together, Ark or the plaintiffs) 

challenged the Service’s decision in federal district court 

under the Wilderness Act, NEPA, and the APA. As relevant 

to this appeal, Ark alleged that the Service’s application of the 

2012 Colorado Rule to the egress-trail proposal was arbitrary 

and capricious and in violation of agency policy because the 

Service had conducted no site-specific inquiry into the area’s 

on-the-ground conditions before excluding it from the 

roadless inventory. If the Service had acknowledged the 

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relatively undeveloped character of the Burnt Mountain 

acreage, Ark asserted, the Service would have been required 

by its own policy to keep the acreage in the roadless 

inventory. Ark also contended that, by failing to send it 

individualized notice of the proposed 2012 Colorado Rule, the 

Service violated NEPA’s notice requirements. 

On August 18, 2014, the District Court granted summary 

judgment to the Service and the Company, denying Ark’s 

cross-motion. Ark Initiative, 64 F. Supp. 3d at 110. The court 

concluded that the Service proffered sufficient justifications 

for the ski-area exclusion: facilitating recreational use of the 

land; assisting Colorado’s ski industry, an important source of 

revenue for the State; reducing land-management conflicts 

and confusion for the ski industry; responding to a request by 

the State; removing degraded areas from the roadless 

inventory; and making only a minor impact on the State’s 

overall roadless management. Id. at 102-04. The Service had 

not deviated from its roadless policy in the manner Ark 

contended, the court explained, because even if the agency 

handbook on which Ark relied governed roadless 

inventorying as well as wilderness designation (the Service 

contends it does not), the Handbook explicitly applies only to 

placement in the inventory of roadless or potential wilderness 

lands, not to ongoing management of that inventory. Id. at 

104-05. The court also rejected the contention that Ark was 

entitled to individualized notice of the 2012 Colorado Rule 

and related NEPA proceedings, highlighting that the Service 

went to great lengths to notify and involve the public in its 

six-year decision-making process for the rule and received 

approximately 312,000 public comments. Id. at 109-10. The 

plaintiffs timely appealed to this court.

 

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II. 

A. 

The question before us is of a type ubiquitous to 

administrative law: Whether the Colorado rule is permissible 

under federal law, not whether we believe as a matter of 

environmental policy it is the best rule, or even a good one. 

We review de novo the District Court’s grant of summary 

judgment and may affirm on any ground properly raised and 

supported by the record. See Ark Initiative v. Tidwell, 749 

F.3d 1071, 1074 (D.C. Cir. 2014). 

Ark challenges the 2012 Colorado Rule under the APA as 

“arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not 

in accordance with law.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). The scope of 

judicial review under the arbitrary-and-capricious standard “is 

narrow and a court is not to substitute its judgment for that of 

the agency,” but the court must confirm that the agency has 

fulfilled its duty to “examine the relevant data and articulate a 

satisfactory explanation for its action including a ‘rational 

connection between the facts found and the choice made.’” 

Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of the United States, Inc. v. State 

Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983) (quoting 

Burlington Truck Lines v. United States, 371 U.S. 156, 168 

(1962)). “[A]n agency rule would be arbitrary and capricious 

if the agency has relied on factors which Congress has not 

intended it to consider, entirely failed to consider an important 

aspect of the problem, offered an explanation for its decision 

that runs counter to the evidence before the agency, or is so 

implausible that it could not be ascribed to a difference in 

view or the product of agency expertise.” Id. A reviewing 

court may not “supply a reasoned basis for the agency’s 

action that the agency itself has not given.” Id. (quoting SEC 

v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 196 (1947)). But a court 

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“will . . . ‘uphold a decision of less than ideal clarity if the 

agency’s path may reasonably be discerned.’” Id. (quoting 

Bowman Transp. Inc. v. Arkansas-Best Freight Sys., Inc., 419 

U.S. 281, 286 (1974)). 

The 2012 Colorado Rule in general, and its ski-area 

exclusion in particular, reflect a change in agency policy, as 

the Service acknowledged in promulgating the rule. The 

Service stated that the new, State-specific rule “adjusted 

roadless area boundaries from the 2001 inventory” in several 

ways, such as by “[e]xcluding ski areas under permit or lands 

allocated in forest plans to ski area development.” 77 Fed. 

Reg. at 39,576. The agency, for the first time, made a “statewide policy decision that roadless areas not overlap with ski 

areas,” and accordingly removed the 8,300 qualifying acres 

from the roadless inventory. Ark Initiative, 749 F.3d at 1077. 

Where an agency changes a policy or practice, it “is 

obligated to supply a reasoned analysis for the change.” State 

Farm, 463 U.S. at 42. But no specially demanding burden of 

justification ordinarily applies to a mere policy change. See 

FCC v. Fox, 556 U.S. 502, 514-16 (2009). An agency “need 

not demonstrate to a court’s satisfaction that the reasons for 

the new policy are better than the reasons for the old one; it 

suffices that the new policy is permissible under the statute, 

that there are good reasons for it, and that the agency believes 

it to be better, which the conscious change of course 

adequately indicates.” Id. at 515. When a “new policy rests 

upon factual findings that contradict those which underlay its 

prior policy,” however, an agency must offer a “more detailed 

justification than what would suffice for a new policy created 

on a blank slate.” Id. As discussed below, no elevated 

burden of justification applies to the Service’s decision 

because, in approving the 2012 Colorado Rule, the Service 

made no new factual findings contradictory to those 

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supporting the nationwide 2001 Roadless Rule. Consistent 

with the holding of the district court, and contrary to Ark’s 

contention, we conclude that the agency’s decision was valid 

and non-arbitrary. 

The Service lawfully exercised its “broad discretion to 

determine the proper mix of uses permitted within [national 

forest] lands.” Wyoming, 661 F.3d at 1268. There is no 

question that the Service’s decision to include in its 

management of Colorado’s forests some limited 

accommodation of recreational skiing, together with new, 

offsetting environmental protections, is permissible under the 

multiple-use mandates reflected in the Organic Act, the 

Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act, and the National Forest 

Management Act. See, e.g., 16 U.S.C §§ 528-529 (requiring 

administration of National Forest System lands for multiple 

uses, including recreation); id. § 1604(e)(1) (requiring forest 

plans to accommodate multiple uses, including recreation). 

Those statutes simply do not constrain the Service’s discretion 

to shift its designation and treatment of once-inventoried 

roadless lands, as it did in approving the 2012 Colorado Rule. 

Indeed, “[n]othing in th[e] [National Forest Management Act] 

or any other federal statute obligates the Forest Service to 

manage inventoried roadless areas as a distinct unit of 

administration or resource value.” Lockyer, 575 F.3d at 1006. 

More to the point, the Service’s explanation for its policy 

change passes muster under the APA. The Service based its 

decision on Colorado’s expressed interests in regulating 

“long-term management of [Colorado’s inventoried roadless 

areas] to ensure roadless area values are passed on to future 

generations, while providing for Colorado-specific situations 

and concerns that are important to the citizens and economy 

of Colorado.” 77 Fed. Reg. at 39,577; see also id. at 39,590. 

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The record supports the Service’s concern that on-theground management conflicts could arise at the boundaries of 

roadless lands and ski areas, and the Service reasonably relied 

on the importance of recreational skiing to Colorado’s 

economy. It noted that ski areas sited in part on public lands 

managed by the Service attract millions of skiers a year, and 

that Colorado skiers spend about a third of the approximately 

$8 billion in tourist dollars the State attracts annually. 77 Fed. 

Reg. at 39,578. A relatively small number of acres subject to 

overlapping roadless and ski-area designations under the 2001 

Roadless Rule affected thirteen ski areas, the Service 

explained, and the exclusion aims to avoid management 

conflict and confusion resulting from that dual designation. 

Id. 

The marginal and limited character of the boundary 

adjustment helped to justify the Service’s treatment of it. The 

ski-area exclusion applies to only 0.2% of all previously 

inventoried roadless areas in the State, thus on the whole only 

minimally affecting Colorado’s roadless acreage. Id. 

Approximately 6,600 of those 8,300 acres had already been 

grandfathered under special-use permits exempting them from 

roadless-area development prohibitions, whether in the 2012 

Colorado Rule, see 36 C.F.R. § 294.48(a), or the 2001 

Roadless Rule, see 36 C.F.R. § 294.14(a), invalidated by 70 

Fed. Reg. 25,654 (May 13, 2005), reinstated by Cal. ex rel. 

Lockyer, 575 F.3d at 1020-21. It was thus only the remaining 

1,700 overlapping acres, zoned for skiing under forest plans 

but not covered by special-use permits, which—but for the 

challenged ski-area exclusion—would have been subject to 

the full protections against roadbuilding and timber removal 

associated with roadless designation. See 77 Fed. Reg. at 

39,594. The Service determined that the limited overlap, 

which may have been the inadvertent result of imprecise 

mapping, could hamper ski-area maintenance and expansion. 

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Importantly, and also contrary to Ark’s contention, the 

Service addressed how the rule taken as a whole would fulfill 

the Service’s conservation mandate. The 2012 Colorado Rule 

contains increased protections in the form of new acreage 

added to the State’s roadless inventory, and a new and more 

restrictive upper-tier designation for some roadless lands. 

Those provisions were included to “offset the limited 

exceptions for Colorado-specific concerns so that the final 

rule is more [environmentally] protective than the 2001 

Roadless Rule.” Id. at 39,578. 

The Service’s reasoning that the excluded acreage 

“include[s] roadless acres with degraded roadless area 

characteristics due to the proximity to a major recreational 

development,” id., does little to aid our review, because it 

lacks a factual basis in the record, and the Service’s 

invocation of that rationale is ambiguous at best. The agency 

has made no attempt to identify the location, scope, or degree 

of any such degradation within the ski-area exclusion. 

Indeed, elsewhere in its preamble to the 2012 Colorado Rule, 

the Service asserted that the rule excludes other lands that 

have been “substantially altered and 8,300 acres for ski area 

management,” suggesting that the 8,300 ski-area acres at issue 

were not among the acres removed on the basis of their 

degraded condition. Id. at 39,577-78 (emphasis added). The 

lack of any clear showing of degradation is of no moment, 

however, as the balance of the Service’s reasoning adequately 

supports the challenged exclusion. 

Colorado’s concern for aligning the boundaries of ski 

areas and roadless acreage, the relatively small amount of 

land affected by the ski-area exclusion, and the rule’s 

substantial offsetting measures provide sufficient, nonarbitrary grounds for the rule. We need not accept the bare 

fact that “the State of Colorado asked for it” as sufficient 

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justification for the ski-area exclusion, Br. of Federal 

Appellees 20, because Colorado is well situated to identify 

factors supporting desirable combinations of forest-land use 

within its borders and has done so here. The reasons the 

Service has provided for accepting Colorado’s proposal need 

not be “so precise, detailed, or elaborate as to be a model for 

agency explanation” in order for us to hold that they are “the 

sort of reasons an agency may consider and act upon.” Fox, 

556 U.S. at 538 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and 

concurring in the judgment). 

Invoking the Ninth Circuit’s recent en banc decision in 

Organized Village of Kake v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 

795 F.3d 956, 959 (9th Cir. 2015), Ark accuses the Service of 

an unjustified about-face in its factual assessment. Ark argues 

that the Service opted in the 2001 Roadless Rule not generally 

to exempt ski areas and therefore was required when it 

exempted ski-area acreage from the 2012 Colorado Rule to 

“provide a more detailed justification than what would suffice 

for a new policy created on a blank slate.” Fox, 556 U.S. at 

515. We disagree. To begin with, Kake is not binding on this 

court, and we take no position here on whether we agree with 

that decision. In any event, as noted above, Fox demands 

enhanced justification where a policy change rests on factual 

findings that contradict the facts undergirding the prior policy, 

circumstances not present here. Id. The rule at issue in Kake

created an exemption from the national 2001 Roadless Rule 

for the 16.8 million acre Tongass National Forest that the 

prior rulemaking had specifically considered and rejected, and 

it did so by making new, contradictory factual findings 

without any additional environmental analysis or material 

change in “the overall decisionmaking picture.” 795 F.3d at 

962 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see id. at 

959-60. The 2012 Colorado Rule, in contrast, was based on 

an entirely new record, including a new EIS, and supported 

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with new, State-specific findings. None of the Colorado 

findings conflicts with the findings underlying the nationwide 

2001 Roadless Rule, which looked at “the ‘whole picture’ 

regarding the management of the National Forest System,” 66 

Fed. Reg. at 3246; see id. at 3246-48, and which, the Service 

even then acknowledged, could affect states differently, id. at 

3264. No enhanced justification was required for the 

Service’s State-specific ski-area exclusion. Cf. Nat’l Ass’n of 

Home Builders v. EPA, 682 F.3d 1032, 1037-38 (D.C. Cir. 

2012) (more detailed justification is unnecessary where 

“petitioners cannot point to any new findings, let alone 

contradictory ones, upon which EPA relied”). 

Ark further contends that the Service acted arbitrarily 

because, Ark asserts, it deviated from the inventory criteria 

embodied in chapter 70 of its Land Management Planning 

Handbook by adopting the ski-area exclusion without regard 

to the affected areas’ on-the-ground conditions. See Chapter 

70, FSH 1909.12 Land Management Planning Handbook 

(2007 Handbook), J.A. 300-31; see National Forest System 

Land Management Planning Directive for Wilderness 

Evaluation, 72 Fed. Reg. 4478 (Jan. 31, 2007). Ark contends 

that the Service’s decisions regarding management of roadless 

areas must be determined solely by “objective criteria” 

specified in the Handbook. Br. of Appellants 40. Those 

criteria, which appear to derive from the Wilderness Act’s 

inventorying directive to a different agency responsible for 

national park land, see 16 U.S.C. § 1132(c), require the 

inventorying of any area that contains no forest roads, 

“contain[s] 5,000 acres or more,” or is at least: contiguous to 

existing wilderness; a self-contained ecosystem; or subject to 

preservation “due to physical terrain and natural conditions,” 

2007 Handbook at 16-17, J.A. 302-03. The Service must 

inventory and manage as roadless any land that fits that 

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objective description, Ark suggests, and it violated the APA 

by failing to do so here. 

Ark’s contentions are off-base, however, because—

consistent with the Wilderness Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1132(c)—the 

Handbook by its own terms applies not to management of 

roadless inventory, but to the Service’s initial inventorying of 

potential wilderness areas. Chapter 70 of the Handbook, 

entitled “Wilderness Evaluation,” begins by stating that it 

“describes the process for identifying and evaluating potential 

wilderness,” not any standards for conserving and managing 

roadless areas. 2007 Handbook at 15, J.A. 301. Ark’s 

confusion likely stems from the fact that the Service identified 

much of today’s roadless inventory as part of its effort under 

the Wilderness Act to compile a list of potential wilderness 

areas. See Wyoming, 661 F.3d at 1221-22. The “inventory of 

potential wilderness,” the Handbook explains, is “completed 

with the express purpose of identifying all lands that meet the 

criteria for being evaluated for wilderness suitability.” 2007 

Handbook at 15-16, J.A. 301-02. 

The Handbook itself seeks to clarify the Service’s 

nomenclature: “Areas of potential wilderness identified 

through this [inventorying] process are called potential 

wilderness areas.” i.e., not roadless inventory. Id. at 15, 

J.A. 301. “This inventory of potential wilderness is not a land 

designation, nor does it imply any particular level of 

management direction or protection in association with the 

evaluation of these potential wilderness areas.” Id. In 

adopting the current version of the Handbook in 2007, the 

Service took further pains to spell out that “the term ‘potential 

wilderness areas’ is used to avoid confusion with the term 

‘inventoried roadless area’ used in the Roadless Area 

Conservation Rule. . . . The Roadless Area Conservation 

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Rule definition is different from the criteria for ‘potential 

wilderness areas.’” 72 Fed. Reg. at 4478. 

 Ark nevertheless urges that the Handbook, at least as the 

Service has applied it, does not mean what it says. Ark 

emphasizes in particular the Service’s mention of the 

Handbook in its response to comments on the proposed 2012 

Colorado Rule. Some commenters questioned the Service’s 

denial of the oil-and-gas industry’s request for an exclusion of 

acreage with high oil-and-gas development potential, while 

others questioned the Service’s failure to prohibit oil-and-gas 

leasing altogether. See 77 Fed. Reg. at 39,588. Ark 

highlights that, in response to such comments, the Service 

stated: “Roadless inventory procedures follow Forest Service 

Handbook 1909.12, Land Management Handbook procedures. 

Whether or not an area is identified as having high mineral 

potential is not an inventory criterion.” Id. Ark contends that 

the Service thereby applied the Handbook to “preclude[]” an 

exclusion for oil-and-gas lands, and similarly should have 

denied the ski-industry exclusion. Br. of Appellants 49. 

The Service permissibly reads its own statement 

differently than does Ark, as a description of the background 

factors that bore on its initial inventorying of lands as 

roadless. The presence of lands in the roadless inventory, the 

2012 Colorado Rule preamble points out, simply did not 

depend on facilitating or prohibiting oil-and-gas development, 

and it was against that backdrop that the Service defended its 

decision to leave existing oil-and-gas leases largely 

undisturbed, neither supplementing leasing rights by 

excluding oil-and-gas-rich lands from roadless inventory, nor 

invalidating existing leases in the name of strengthening 

environmental protection of roadless lands. In light of the 

record and the deference we owe to the Service, we cannot 

credit Ark’s claim of a “longstanding agency policy and 

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practice” reflected in the Handbook that “preclude[s]” or 

“foreclose[s]” the Service from removing the ski area lands 

from roadless inventory. Br. of Appellants 49, 51. 

Ark further contends that the Service arbitrarily 

distinguished between similarly situated industries because it 

granted ski-area boundary adjustment sought by the State 

while denying the oil-and-gas industry’s requested exclusions. 

The record shows otherwise. The Service recognized that the 

ski-area boundary adjustment affected only 8,300 acres of 

land. 77 Fed. Reg. at 39,578. The oil-and-gas industry’s 

requested exclusion, in contrast, would have removed at least 

150,000 acres from the roadless inventory. See 1 Final EIS 

2012 Colorado Rule at 85, J.A. 431 (listing leased oil-and-gas 

lands within Colorado’s inventoried roadless areas); see also 

77 Fed. Reg. at 39,578 (noting that there are nearly 900,000 

acres classified as having high or moderate-to-high oil-andgas potential within Colorado’s inventoried roadless areas). 

The Service credited the offsetting protections of the 2012 

Colorado Rule as a factor in the acceptability of the ski-area 

exclusion, 77 Fed. Reg. at 39,578, but those added protections 

would have been dwarfed by the scope of the requested oiland-gas exclusion. Accordingly, the Service’s decision to 

exclude from the roadless inventory marginal portions of 

designated ski areas, but not vast swaths of oil-and-gas lands, 

was not arbitrary and capricious. 

B. 

Ark and the two individual plaintiffs also contend that, by 

failing to send them individualized notice of the rulemaking 

and NEPA proceedings relating to the 2012 Colorado Rule, 

the Service violated NEPA’s scoping regulations, 40 C.F.R. 

§§ 1501.7(a)(1), 1506.6(b)(1)-(3). As the District Court aptly 

recounted, both Colorado and the Service made “impressive 

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efforts to reach out to the public as it worked out the contours 

of the Colorado Rule.” Ark Initiative, 64 F. Supp. 3d at 110. 

Those efforts included: five formal public-involvement 

processes, generating 312,000 public comments; the creation 

of a bipartisan task force in Colorado which held more than a 

dozen meetings and considered more than 40,000 public 

comments; publication of numerous notices in the Federal 

Register; and three open meetings of the Roadless Area 

Conservation National Advisory Committee. See 77 Fed. 

Reg. at 39,581. It is difficult to see how any person or 

organization with more than a passing interest in the 

rulemaking could have missed a chance to participate. 

Ark’s claim that it was entitled to individualized notice 

falls short because none of the cited regulations demands any 

such notice to entities in Ark’s circumstances. Section 

1501.7(a)(1) provides that, in determining the scope and 

significance of issues to be addressed in a NEPA process, an 

agency “shall . . . [i]nvite the participation of” various 

affected governments, agencies, and entities, as well as “other 

interested persons (including those who might not be in 

accord with the action on environmental grounds).” 40 

C.F.R. § 1501.7(a)(1). Ark argues that its successful 

administrative challenge to the Environmental Assessment for 

the Burnt Mountain egress trail in 2006, which turned on the 

agency’s failure to evaluate the area’s roadless characteristics, 

rendered it an “interested” person under § 1501.7(a)(1) with 

the same rights as the plaintiff in Northwest Coalition for 

Alternatives to Pesticides v. Lyng, 844 F.2d 588 (9th Cir. 

1988). But, as the District Court recognized, Ark Initiative, 

64 F. Supp. 3d at 109, Ark’s partial and local administrative 

victory concerning development on a single parcel of roadless 

land, years before the Service’s state-wide rulemaking, is a far 

cry from the interest of the plaintiff organization in Lyng “as a 

litigant earlier in th[at] action”—the very action that 

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successfully mandated the new EIS of which the organization 

sought notice. Lyng, 844 F.2d at 595. Were we to accept 

Ark’s sweeping claim that NEPA requires the Service “to 

give personal notice to any interested parties of any decision 

that will affect their interests, irrespective of whether such 

entities have ever previously litigated over the decision in 

question,” Brief of Appellants 63, NEPA proceedings would 

regularly, and often senselessly, be derailed for lack of notice. 

Section 1506.6 provides that agencies “shall mail notice” 

of NEPA proceedings both “to those who have requested it on 

an individual action,” 40 C.F.R. § 1506.6(b)(1), and to 

“national organizations reasonably expected to be interested 

in the matter,” id. § 1506.6(b)(2), and that notice “may” be 

given in various ways to specified types of potentially 

interested groups or individuals for actions “with effects 

primarily of local concern,” id. § 1506.6(b)(3). By its terms, 

section 1506.6(b)(1) only applies to requested notice about 

“an individual action,” and not to open-ended requests for 

notice of any actions that could in any way affect a given plot 

of land, such as the general request Ark purports to have made 

here with respect to Burnt Mountain. Ark has made no 

showing that it qualifies as a national organization under 

section 1506.6(b)(2) or that it falls within the few categories 

of entities listed in section 1506.6(b)(3), which for the most 

part does not contemplate individualized notice in any event. 

The Service’s failure individually to invite Ark to participate 

in NEPA or rulemaking proceedings thus did not run afoul of 

any NEPA notice requirement. 

* * * 

 For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the 

District Court. 

So ordered. 

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