Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-95-05185/USCOURTS-caDC-95-05185-0/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 March 18, 1996 Decided August 23, 1996

No. 95-5185

MOUNTAIN STATES LEGAL FOUNDATION, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

DAN GLICKMAN, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 92cv00097)

Todd S. Welch argued the cause for appellants. William P. Pendley was on the briefs with him.

Edward J. Shawaker, Attorney, United States Department ofJustice, argued the cause for appellees.

Lois J. Schiffer, Assistant Attorney General, Anne S. Almy and Robert L. Klarquist, Attorneys, were

on the brief with him.

Douglas L. Honnold and James S. Angell were on the brief for appellees the Wilderness Society, et

al.

Before: BUCKLEY, WILLIAMS and HENDERSON, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WILLIAMS.

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge: Plaintiffstwo non-profit corporations, several Montana and

Idaho municipalities, and a lumber companyfiled suit attacking the government's choice among

several alternatives for timber harvesting in part of a national forest. They claimed that in rejecting

alternatives with more harvesting the government disregarded necessary procedures and neglected

(or at least gave too short shrift to) important factors, i.e., acted arbitrarily and capriciously. The

plaintiffs based their claims on federalstatutes governing use of the nationalforests, as well as on the

Administrative Procedure Act, NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321

et seq.) and the ESA (Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1531 et seq.). The district court

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dismissed most claims on the pleadings for want of standing, and the rest on summary judgment for

want of standing and, in the alternative, on the merits. See Mountain States Legal Foundation v.

Madigan, Civ. A. No. 92-0097, 1992 WL 613292 (D.D.C. 1992); Mountain States Legal

Foundation v. Glickman, 922 F. Supp. 628 (D.D.C. 1995). We affirm, though for the most part on

the merits rather than on standing.

* * *

In 1972 the Forest Service discovered that the mountain pine beetle was infesting and killing

a number of lodgepole pine standsin the Upper Yaak River drainage region ofthe Kootenai National

Forest in Montana. Since dead trees rapidly lose their commercial value and contribute to wildfire

risk, the Forest Service sought to accelerate timber harvesting in the region and began construction

and reconstruction of logging roads. The Ninth Circuit found that the different road building and

logging operations going on in the Upper Yaak were "connected actions" for purposes of NEPA, and

thus were of enough significance to require an Environmental Impact Statement. It enjoined further

operations pending completion of the statement. See Save the Yaak Committee v. Block, 840 F.2d

714 (9th Cir. 1988).

The required EIS, finished in 1990, discussed the environmental,social, and economic effects

of 14 alternate plans with varying levels of timber harvest and road construction. See United States

Forest Service, Upper Yaak Final Environmental Impact Statement (April 20, 1990) ("FEIS"). The

FEIS preferred "Alternative 9B," which was among the choices allowing the least logging. But the

Forest Supervisor for the Kootenai National Forest picked Alternative 9A, which allowed

considerably more logging, on the grounds that it would "provide the highest timber harvest level

while meeting the requirements of the ESA." Record of Decision at 2 (August 24, 1990).

Plaintiffs filed suit in district court after the Regional Forester upheld the Supervisor's

selection. They would have the Forest Service allow more logging, specifically championing

Alternative 6, which projects sales of 151 million board feet ("MMBF") of lumber, compared to

Alternative 9A's 90 MMBF. Besides the Administrative Procedure Act, the ESA and NEPA, they

invoke three statutes guiding the administration of the national forests: the Organic Act, 16 U.S.C.

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§§ 473-82, 551, the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act ("MUSYA"), 16 U.S.C. §§ 528 et seq., and

the Resources Planning Act as amended by the National Forest Management Act ("NFMA"), 16

U.S.C. §§ 1600 et seq.

Although several of plaintiffs' claims are procedural, their significance depends on the

plaintiffs' substantive theories. These appear to be twofold. First, plaintiffs believe that the selection

of Alternative 9A makes an arbitrary trade-off as between the welfare of the grizzly bear and its

habitat as opposed to the welfare of people who make a living through the timber industry, unduly

favoring the grizzly. Second, they say that the timber left in place under Alternative 9A poses an

unnecessarily high risk of catastrophic wildfire, endangering the grizzly bear, the forest itself, and

people living nearby. Before we discuss the merits of the claims, we first examine plaintiffs' standing

to bring them.

I. Standing

Plaintiffsmust establishbothconstitutional and prudentialstanding. Because they assert quite

a variety of injuries, we think it worthwhile to make the pointperhaps obvious, but on which we've

found no casesthat on any given claim the injury that supplies constitutionalstanding must be the

same as the injury within the requisite "zone of interests" for purposes of prudential standing. For

example, if plaintiffs established an interest sufficiently aligned with the purposes of the ESA for

prudentialstanding, but failed to show (for example) an adequate causalrelation between the agency

decision attacked and any injury to that interest, we could not adjudicate the claimeven if plaintiffs

had constitutionalstanding with respect to some other interest that was outside the requisite "zone."

With this in mind, we first examine whether plaintiffs allege injuries adequate for constitutional

standing, and then inquire whether at least one of those injuries can be tied to interests protected by

each statute at issue.

For each claim, if constitutional and prudentialstanding can be shown for at least one plaintiff,

we need not consider the standing of the other plaintiffs to raise that claim. See Watt v. Energy

Action Educational Foundation, 454 U.S. 151, 160 (1981); Village of Arlington Heights v.

Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 264 n.9 (1977).

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A. Constitutional standing

The "irreducible constitutional minimum" of standing contains three elements:

First, the plaintiff must have suffered an injury in factan invasion of a legally

protected interest which is(a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent,

not conjectural or hypothetical. Second, there must be a causal connection between

the injury and the conduct complained ofthe injury has to be fairly ... traceable to

the challenged action of the defendant.... Third, it must be likely, as opposed to

merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992) (internal quotations and citations

omitted). See also Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Americans United for Separation of Church &

State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472 (1982). We find that the plaintiffs have set forth facts showing those

elements in two independent ways, each in enough (unrebutted) detail to withstand a motion for

summary judgment. 

1. Injury to economic interests from curtailment of logging

Plaintiff Owens & Hurst Lumber Company is located in Eureka, Montana, and is "almost

totally dependent on federal timber for its raw materials, about one third of which comes from the

upper Yaak River drainage." First Amended Complaint ¶ 12 at 5-6. The owner of the company

averred that after the Forest Service's announced plans to allow logging of 300 MMBF of lumber

from the Yaak Area were postponed by "appeals" (presumably the litigation resulting in Save the

Yaak Committee's injunction), the company's mill was temporarily closed and twenty-five workers

were laid off. Declaration of James L. Hurst ¶ 4 at 2. Given the company's historic dependence upon

the Upper Yaak for its supply, together with the disruptive effect of the past shutdown, logging

cutbacks in the Upper Yaak clearly inflict injury on the firm's economic well-being, which an order

reducing the cutbacks would redress. And even forcing the Forest Service to rethink the issue would

have some chance of affecting the cutbacks. See Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572 n.7 (for

procedural default, plaintiffs need not show that the default necessarily caused the injury or that its

correction would necessarily redress the injury).

The district court, after reciting Lujan's standard for constitutional standing, rejected any

economic injuries asthe basisfor "injury in fact" because "the Organic Act, MUSYA, and NFMA do

not provide a legally cognizable economic interest in a specified level of timber harvest." Mountain

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States Legal Foundation v. Glickman, 922 F. Supp. 628, 631-32 (D.D.C. 1995), citing Region 8

Forest Serv. Timber Purchasers v. Alcock, 993 F.2d 800, 808 (11th Cir. 1993) (denying plaintiffs'

"right" to future timber but seeming to rest denial of standing primarily on speculative relation

between decision attacked and any future curtailment of supply).

We take it that the district court's phrase "legally cognizable" draws upon the Lujan Court's

uses of similar phrases to modify the necessary "injury," e.g., "legally protected," 504 U.S. at 560,

and "cognizable," id. at 562-63. While we are unsure what function the Court intended for these

modifiers, we are quite confident it did not intend to restore the "legalright" test. However one times

that test's demise, it clearly did not survive Association of Data Processing Serv. Orgs. v. Camp, 397

U.S. 150, 153 (1970), which held that the "legal interest" test went to the merits and not to standing,

and found sufficient injury in the loss of profitsthat plaintiffs claimed would flow fromthe defendant's

unduly permissive regulation of competitors. Compare, e.g., Perkins v. Lukens Steel Co., 310 U.S.

113, 125 (1940) (plaintiff must show injury to a right). The plaintiffs may not have any particular

right to federal timber contracts, but no such "right" is required any more than a "right" to view

crocodiles in foreign sites was necessary for the plaintiffs in Lujan. There the Court acknowledged

that "the desire to use or observe an animalspecies, even for purely esthetic purposes, is undeniably

a cognizable interest for purpose of standing," Lujan, 504 U.S. at 562-63, and proceeded to reach

the question of whether the plaintiffs' vague plans to return to their allegedly-threatened overseas

animal watching were sufficient to make the possible injury to that interest "actual or imminent." Id.

at 564. Government acts constricting a firm's supply of its main raw material clearly inflict the

constitutionally necessary injury.

The district court, believing the selection of Alternative 6 would run afoul of the Endangered

Species Act, found that any injuries to plaintiffs from the selection of Alternative 9A were

irredressable. Mountain States v. Glickman, 922 F. Supp. at 633. In fact there is some confusion

in the cases on whether legal limits on redress are part ofthe calculation of redressability for standing

purposes. The Supreme Court has assumed that they were, saying in Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505

U.S. 788 (1992), that the courts' lack of power to enjoin the President was not a bar to standing

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because an order against the Secretary ofCommercewould afford relief. Id. at 802-03. And in North

Carolina Utilities Comm'n v. FERC, 653 F.2d 655, 667-68 (D.C. Cir. 1981), we held that plaintiffs'

claim that an agency had unlawfully ended an investigation was irredressable because of the agency's

discretion to refuse to adopt any remedies regardless of the investigation's outcome. Cf. Kennecott

Utah Copper v. Dep't of Interior, No. 93-1700, Slip. op. at 10-13 (D.C. Cir., July 16, 1996) (FOIA

claim dismissed for want of jurisdiction where statute barred court from ordering Federal Register

publication of documentsrequested byplaintiffs). But cf. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572 n.7.

In In re Thornburgh, 869 F.2d 1503 (D.C. Cir. 1989), however, we unequivocally declared that the

redressability inquiry wassimply whether, if plaintiffssecured the reliefthey sought, it would redress

their injury. Id. at 1511.

We need not resolve this conflict here. So far as appears no court in the modern era has

treated a garden-variety substantive defect in plaintiffs' claim as defeating redressability. Unlike the

situation inFranklin, NorthCarolina Utilities Comm'n, and Kennecott Utah, the alleged impediment

to redress stems not from a defect in the court's institutional power to order a specific remedy but

merely from the interplay of variousstatutes bearing on the substantive validity of the Forest Service

decision. Assuming that purely legal remedial gaps can establish a lack of redressability, the

substantive impact of the ESA is not a remedial gap at all; to treat it as an impairment of

redressability would seemingly allow any merits defect in plaintiffs' claim to defeat their standing.

Accordingly the ESA's substantive provisions are irrelevant on this point.

2. Damage to aesthetic and environmental interests from increased risk of wildfire

Plaintiffs assert that their members use the Kootenai National Forest in ways that would be

severely impaired if government error led to a devastating wildfire. Bruce Vincent, for instance, a

member of plaintiff Communities for a Great Northwest, said he was a resident of Libby, Montana,

located in the middle of the Kootenai National Forest, and that he uses the forest for, inter alia,

hiking, hunting, camping, fishing, observing wildlife, finding solitude, and picking berries.

Declaration of Bruce Vincent WW 1-3 at 1-2. See also Declaration of John Hossack WW 1-3 at 1-2

(describing activities such as camping and hiking in area of Kootenai that is part of Upper Yaak).

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Plaintiffs' aesthetic and environmental interestsin having such areasfree of devastating forest fire are

clearly sufficient for Article III standing. See Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 734 (1972);

Humane Society of the United States v. Babbitt, 46 F.3d 93, 97 (D.C. Cir. 1995).

Of course plaintiffs must show that the acts under review posed a threat to these interests.

In fact they point to affidavits that they have submitted, along with the FEIS itself, to claim that the

selection of Alternative 9A creates an increased risk of catastrophic wildfire compared to other

alternatives (such as Alternative 6). In a section on fires and fuel management, the FEIS allows that

dead trees within lodgepole pine standsinfested with the mountain pine beetle provide "a tremendous

accumulation of fuels in a short period of time.... Timber harvesting and post sale fuel treatment

would greatly reduce the wildfire risk in these high risk stands." FEIS at IV-148. See also id. at III40 (describing rapid buildup of fuel from dying pine and noting that lightning, rather than human

activity, has caused the most wildfires). Indeed, a table comparing the respective effects of each

proposed alternative singles out each alternative's percent reduction in "fuel loading"i.e., trees,

dead and aliveas the gauge of its impact on wildfire risk. Id. Table II-3 at II-48. It projects a

5.4% reduction in high-risk fuels acres for alternative 9A, but a 14.2% reduction for Alternative 6,

thanks to the greater logging under the latter.

The district court was unimpressed by the difference, branding a claim of increased wildfire

risk as "mere speculation." Mountain States Legal Foundation, 922 F. Supp. at 632. Of course for

a probabilistic event such as a wildfire, almost any act (other than, say, deliberate setting of a fire)

merely affects probabilities, but we do not understand the customary rejection of "speculative" causal

links,see, e.g., Lujan, 504 U.S. at 567 (finding too speculative idea that single project affecting some

portion of a species willthwart would-be observer's goals), asruling out all probabilistic injuries. The

more drastic the injury that government action makes more likely, the lesser the increment in

probability necessary to establish standing. In Village of Elk Grove Village v. Evans, 997 F.2d 328

(7th Cir. 1993), for example, plaintiffs were concerned that construction of a radio tower on a flood

plain, "by plopping down a huge slab of concrete near the creek and thuslimiting the creek's drainage

area," would increase the risk of flooding. Id. at 329. The court acknowledged that the injury was

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probabilistic, but reasoned that "even a small probability of injury is sufficient to create a case or

controversyto take a suit out ofthe categoryofthe hypotheticalprovided of course that the relief

sought would, if granted, reduce the probability." Id. And in Dimarzo v. Cahill, 575 F.2d 15, 18 (1st

Cir. 1978), the court found enhanced risk of fire an adequate injury, not even mentioning the issue

of risk quantification. While there the plaintiffsinmates in an allegedly fire-prone jailwere much

more directly at risk, the opinion reflects, we think, a sensible recognition that the potential

destruction of fire is so severe that relatively modest increments in risk should qualify for standing.

Under the figures presented here, the Forest Service's choice was between keeping 85.8% of

the fuel and keeping 94.6%. Thus, although residual fuel is the main wildfire variable at stake in the

decision under review, the difference between plaintiffs' and the Forest Service's choices is

proportionally smallAlternative 9A retains only about 10% more fuel than Alternative 6. (On the

other hand, Alternative 6 removes about three times as much fuel as Alternative 9A.) Presumably the

high retention rate under both alternatives was acceptable because the Forest Service viewed the

expected negative value of wildfires (i.e., an aggregation of the damage from fires of all possible

scales, each type weighted by its probability) as tolerably low. Yet when an agency has devoted a

large portion of its decisionmaking resources to comparing alternatives' different effects on wildfire,

and pointed to non-trivial variations in risk, it would take some rather dramatic piece of information

to persuade usthat the difference isso trivial that persons physically close to the potentialfire cannot

question the decision.

In finding the effect of different fuel levels merely speculative, the district court pointed to the

presence of other variables affecting wildfire risk, saying that "the risk of wildfire is primarily

controlled through restrictions on harvest activities, and control of public access to areas with

accumulating fuelsthat feed the fire." Mountain States Legal Foundation, 922 F. Supp. at 632. But

the cited passage of the FEIS clearly listed "fuels" as the first source of risk, and said (logically

enough) that that risk was "controlled primarily through the management offuelsthat could feed the

fire," i.e., the primary control device was the obverse of the apparently primary cause. FEIS III-40

(emphasis added). Accordingly, though the presence of other causal factors is indisputable, we think

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that under Village of Elk Grove Village and Dimarzo the incremental risk is enough of a threat of

injury to entitle plaintiffs to be heard.

Of course, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that they would be injured by any wildfire that

might result from the risk differential. The Hossack affidavit states not only that Hossack hikes and

camps in the Kootenai, but also that the part of the Kootenai next to his home town (Eureka) is in

fact the Upper Yaak Drainage Area, the entirety of which is to be governed by the logging decisions

under review. Thus we understand him (and defendants do not suggest the contrary) to be asserting

that his hiking and camping occur in precisely the area affected by the wildfire risk. Accordingly,

plaintiffs do not suffer the defect of those in Lujan v. Nat'l Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. 871, 889

(1990), who stated only that one of their members used "unspecified portions of an immense tract of

territory" in which some localized mining might occur.

B. Prudential standing

Plaintiffs cannot sue to prevent violations ofstatutes causing themharmunlessthey fallwithin

the "zone of interests" the statutes were passed to protect. See, e.g, Association of Data Processing

Serv. Orgs. v. Camp, 397 U.S. at 153; Clarke v. Securities Indus. Ass'n, 479 U.S. 388, 394-403

(1987); Lujan v. Nat'l Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. at 883. We thus turn to each of the statutes

invoked to see if either of plaintiffs' injuries which qualify for constitutional standing are injuries to

interests protected bythose statutes,so that theyare "aggrieved by agencyaction" within the meaning

of the APA, 5 U.S.C. § 702. 

1. National Environmental Policy Act

Despite NEPA's rather sweeping list of interests intended to be served, see 42 U.S.C. §§

4321, 4331, we have said that they do not include purely monetary interests, such as the competitive

effect that a construction project might have on plaintiff's commercial enterprise. Realty Income

Trust v. Eckerd, 564 F.2d 447, 452 (D.C. Cir. 1977). But a plaintiff's economic interests do not

blight his qualifying ones, such as aesthetic and environmental interests in the quality of public lands

where he hikes, camps, fishes, etc. Under our circuit's law NEPA standing is not limited to the "pure

of heart." Realty Income Trust, 564 F.2d at 452-53. Accordingly, plaintiffs whose members use the

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Upper Yaak for such purposes as hiking are plainly within the zone of interests protected by NEPA,

and, as we have seen, the enhanced wildfire risk is a constitutionally adequate injury to that interest.

So we need not consider whether plaintiffs would have NEPA standing to attack the defendants'

decision on the ground that itsincrease in wildfire risk (which issurely "environmental") impinges on

their logging interests.

2. The forest management statutes

All of these statutes make clear a congressional intention that the nationalforestsshould play

a significant role in supplying timber, an interest that firms engaged in logging and relying on the

national forest as their primary source seem well suited to advance. They also, especially the later

statutes, indicate a purpose to advance outdoor recreation; individuals who hike, camp and fish in

the forest are thus intended beneficiaries, and the plaintiff foundations to which they belong are

suitable champions. Hazardous Waste Treatment Council v. EPA, 861 F.2d 277, 283 (D.C. Cir.

1988). See also First Amended Complaint ¶ 4 at 2-3 (alleging that Mountain States Legal Foundation

is "dedicated to making the public lands available for multiple use as provided by federal law"); Lujan

v. Nat'l Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. at 885, citing Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising

Comm'n, 432 U.S. 333 (1977). Specifically, the Organic Act provides that "[n]o national forest shall

be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, or for the purpose of

securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuoussupply of timber for the use

and necessities of citizens of the United States[.]" 16 U.S.C. § 475. The Multiple-Use SustainedYield Act declares the policy of the Congress "that the national forests ... shall be administered for

outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes." 16 U.S.C. § 528. And

NFMA similarly says that the national forests should provide for yield of the products and services

mentioned by the MUSYA, specifically including timber, recreation, and watershed. 16 U.S.C. §

1604(e). 

3. The Endangered Species Act

The plaintiffs make two distinct claims under the ESA, ones that are at least superficially at

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1Plaintiffs do not assert that the ESA's citizen suit provision, 16 U.S.C. § 1540(g)(1),

dispenses with any requirement of prudential standing at all, i.e., manifests a congressional intent

to allow suits up to the limit of constitutional standing. There is a circuit split on the issue. See

Bennett v. Plenert, 63 F.3d 915, 918 n.3 (9th Cir. 1995), cert. granted, 116 S. Ct. 1316 (1996). 

Our own circuit has applied the zone of interests test without discussion of the citizen suit

provision. See State of Idaho v. Interstate Commerce Comm'n, 35 F.3d 585, 592 (D.C. Cir.

1994); Humane Society of the United States v. Hodel, 840 F.2d 45, 60-61 (D.C. Cir. 1988). 

Since the plaintiffs do not mention the citizen suit provision, or answer the government's claim

that they failed to invoke it, we do not address the issue. 

odds with each other.1 First, they argue that the heightened risk of wildfires resulting from the

government's choice of Alternative 9A will threaten the grizzly bear and its habitat along with the rest

of the forest. Protecting the grizzly bear (listed as threatened, see 50 C.F.R. § 17.11) is certainly

within any zone of interests contemplated by the ESA, but is not among the interests explicitly

advanced by plaintiffs in their successive complaints and affidavits. The closest they have come to

asserting a concrete interest in the grizzly are expressions of members' desires to observe wildlife

generally. In the absence of any reference to past (and anticipated future) enjoyment of the grizzly

bear's presence, a mere expression of enjoyment of all things sylvan is inadequate to show a "

"directly' affected" interest with adequate specificity to survive dismissal on the pleadings, much less

summary judgment. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 562-63, quoting Sierra Club

v. Morton, 405 U.S. at 735, 739. Indeed, at one point below the plaintiffs asserted that there was "no

evidence that grizzly bear habitat exists in the Decision Area." Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary

Judgment at 28 (June 24, 1994). Plaintiffs cannot claim an injury to their grizzly-viewing interests

if they do not think there are grizzlies in the area to begin with. "If you've got nothing, you've got

nothing to lose." B. Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone," Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).

The plaintiffs'second claimis explicitlyeconomic. They point out that a designation of critical

habitat under the ESA, and application of its concomitant protections, is to occur only after a

consideration of the designation's economic effect:

The Secretary shall designate critical habitat ... on the basis of the best scientific data

available and after taking into consideration the economic impact, and any other

relevant impact, of specifying any particular area as critical habitat.

16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(2) (emphasis added). The plaintiffs claim that the authors of the FEIS and the

Record of Decision implicitly designated the Upper Yaak as critical habitat for the grizzly bear, but

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without performing the economic analysis required by § 1533(b)(2).

While Congress clearly did not adopt the ESA for the purpose of protecting economic

interests, it equally clearly intended that such interests should come into play when critical habitats

are designated. The canonical statement of the zone of interests testthat it embraces those whose

interests are "protected or regulated by the statute ... in question," Association of Data Processing

Service Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153 (1970) (emphasis added)seemsto presuppose

a divide between the interests of the "protected" and of the "regulated." In the context of private

sector regulation (the context ofData Processing itself, for example), the divide commonlyexists and

presents no obstacle to sound analysis. The "protected" parties advance the interests that initially

spurred legislative intervention, and the "regulated" ones advance the interests of those who might

be burdened by the agency's going too far in pursuing the statute's primary thrust.

[N]o legislation pursues its purposes at all costs. Deciding what competing values

will or will not be sacrificed to the achievement of a particular objective is the very

essence oflegislative choiceand it frustratesratherthaneffectuateslegislative intent

simplistically to assume that whateverfurthersthe statute's primary objective must be

the law.

Rodriguez v. United States, 480 U.S. 522, 525-26 (1987). But where the statute governs the use of

public property, and thusthe "regulated" entity and the decisionmaking agency are one and the same,

denial of standing to private parties adversely affected by excessive agency zeal would leave the

countervailing values with no conceivable champion in the courts. We see no reason to suppose that

Congress would have intended so drastic a tilt. As plaintiffs have shown an eminently plausible

relationship between their interests and policy values that play an important constraining role in the

statutes at issue, and thus must be said to underlie those statutes, see Humane Society of the United

States v. Hodel, 840 F.2d 45, 60-61 (D.C. Cir. 1988); Clarke v. Securities Indus. Ass'n, 479 U.S.

at 403, we see no obstacle to prudential standing.

We thus part company with the Ninth Circuit, which has held economic interests to be

fundamentally at odds with the statutory purpose of the ESA, and any vindication of them to be a

frustration of that purpose. See Bennett v. Plenert, 63 F.3d 915, 921-22 (9th Cir. 1995), cert.

granted, 116 S. Ct. 1316 (1996). While ordinarily we would be most reluctant to create a circuit

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split, in this case the usual reasons for hesitation are absent: thanks to the Supreme Court's having

already granted certiorari in Bennett, any error we make will be corrected not only swiftly but

cheaplywith no additional burden on the Court.

II. The Merits

A. The forest management statutes

Timber harvesting is clearly a major goal of the forest management statutes, as we noted in

our discussion of their various zones of interests. But this does not mean that logging must be

maximized at the expense of all other values. "Multiple use" does "not necessarily [mean] the

combination of uses that will give the greatest dollar return or the greatest unit output." 16 U.S.C.

§ 531. Moreover, the Forest Supervisor made it clear that he selected Alternative 9A because it

maximized logging subject to the constraint ofmeeting various other criteria, including issuesrelating

to water supply and the welfare of the grizzly. Record of Decision at 1-2 (August 24, 1990).

Specifically, Alternative 9A offered the most logging for any alternative that satisfied the

requirementwhich the Forest Supervisor treated as an absoluteof supplying the "70%

effectiveness level" for grizzly habitatas against a 69% effectiveness for Alternative 6. See id.;

FEIS Table S-2 at S-11.

Plaintiffs urge that increased logging is not at odds with the statutes' other values, since the

dead and dying lodgepole pinesleft behind under Alternative 9A contribute so powerfully to wildfire

risk and thereby endanger the entire forest. Certainly an attention to 1% variances among the

alternatives of "habitat effectiveness" for the grizzly could be myopic if those same alternatives

provided wildly varying levels of catastrophic wildfire risk.

There are two crucial drawbacks to plaintiffs' position, however. The first is that the gap

which appeared non-fatal as to standingthat they had not translated the difference in fuel removal

levels between Alternatives 6 and 9A into differences in wildfire probability (with suitable weighting

for seriousness)is here a graver defect. Without some quantification of the incremental wildfire

risk, we are in no position to say that the defendantswho carefully gathered virtually all the data

onwhich plaintiffsrelyacted arbitrarilyor capriciously. Second, the 70% effectiveness requirement

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derives from an interpretation of the ESA thatas we shall seeplaintiffs do not successfully

contest. There is nothing arbitrary or capricious about an officer's incurring some incremental wildfire

risk if the law requires him to do so.

Plaintiffs' claims about an invalid water yield model are not mentioned on appeal and are

apparently abandoned.

B. The Endangered Species Act

We have found that plaintiffs lack standing for their claim based on wildfire's threat to the

grizzly, and thus are left with the claim that the Forest Service designated an illegal de facto critical

habitat without the required consideration of countervailing economic concerns.

Here plaintiffs' critical premise is that the welfare of a threatened or endangered species is of

no special interest to federal land managers except on lands designated as critical habitat. That is not

the law. The ESA provides that

[e]ach Federal agency shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the

Secretary, insure that any action authorized, funded, or carried out by such agency ...

is not likely to [1] jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or

threatened species or [2] result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat

of such species which is determined ... to be critical ...

16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)(2). The ESA thus appears, in the part we have designated [1], to bar actions

jeopardizing the continued existence of a threatened or endangered species, regardless ofwhether any

habitat has been marked as critical. Indeed, plaintiffs offer no legal analysis to the contrary. Here,

the Forest Supervisor consulted with the Fish and Wildlife Service about the impact of Alternatives

6 and 9A on the grizzly as required by Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, see Record of

Decision at 2, and the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that "timber harvesting as outlined under

Alternative 6 is likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the grizzly bear, and that timber

harvesting under Alternative 9A is not likely to jeopardize the grizzly bear." Biological Opinion at

1 (June 20, 1990). This did not depend on a critical habitat designation, and plaintiffs say nothing to

draw in question the merits of the jeopardy assessment, which listed six factors creating a "jeopardy

situation" for the grizzly bear and seven ways in which Alternative 6 fails to redress the situation.

Biological Opinion at 6-9. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's dismissal of the claim as a

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matter of law.

C. National Environmental Policy Act

Here plaintiffs' essential claims appear to be that the government failed to prepare

environmental impact statements for a grizzly bear recovery plan and for a Memorandum of

Understanding with Montana regarding water issues.

As to the first claim, the objection rests on a rather long chain of decisionmaking, one link of

which, say plaintiffs, required but did not receive the benefits of an environmental impact statement.

Recall that of the alternatives reviewed, the Forest Supervisor selected Alternative 9A because it

would "provide the highest timber harvest level while meeting the requirements ofthe ESA," Record

of Decision at 2, i.e., would not jeopardize the recovery of the grizzly. He relied on the Fish &

Wildlife Service's Biological Opinion, which ruled out Alternative 6 because it did not satisfy various

criteria said to be necessary "to avoid the likelihood of jeopardizing the grizzly bear." Biological

Opinion at 7. Plaintiffs do not contest that finding substantively, nor do they claim that the Biological

Opinion itself required an EIS. Rather, they appear to claim that the defect lies in a still earlier step,

the formulation of what they call a "Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan." Appellants' Opening Brief at 50;

Complaint WW 111-120 at 37-39; First Amended Complaint WW 67-70 at 18-19. But plaintiffs

have neither identified this alleged plan, nor shown what role it may have played in the framing of the

Biological Opinion or any other agency decision. Accordingly, we have no basis for saying that

creation of the "Plan," if indeed it ever was created, required the preparation of an EIS.

As to the plaintiffs' claim about an illegal Memorandum of Understanding on water quality,

it depends on their assertion that the government used "water quality as the only real factor to select

Alternative 9A." First Amended Complaint ¶ 66 at 18. This is plainly false. It is clear that concern

for the grizzly bear, and a desire to follow the ESA, led the Forest Supervisor to narrow the set of

alternatives from which he chose.

* * *

The district court's judgments, though in part erroneous with respect to standing, must be

upheld because the claims for which plaintiffs have standing lose on the merits. For the foregoing

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reasons, the judgments of the district court are

Affirmed.

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