Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-71_omjp.pdf
Page Number: 13.0

10 

WEYERHAEUSER CO. v. UNITED STATES FISH AND 

WILDLIFE SERV.
 
Opinion of the Court 

vive.  Brief  for  Petitioner  25.    (Habitat  can,  of  course,
include  areas  where  the  species  does  not  currently  live, 
given  that  the  statute  defines  critical  habitat  to  include
unoccupied  areas.)    The  Service  in  turn  disputes  Weyer-
haeuser’s  premise  that  the  administrative  record  shows
that the frog could not survive in Unit 1.  Brief for Federal 
Respondents 22, n. 4.

The  Court  of  Appeals  concluded  that  “critical  habitat” 
designations  under  the  statute  were  not  limited  to  areas
that qualified as habitat.  See 827 F. 3d, at 468 (“There is 
no  habitability  requirement  in  the  text  of  the  ESA  or  the 
implementing  regulations.”).    The  court  therefore  had  no 
occasion  to  interpret  the  term  “habitat”  in  Section 
4(a)(3)(A)(i) or to assess the Service’s administrative find-
ings  regarding  Unit  1.    Accordingly,  we  vacate  the  judg-
ment  below  and  remand  to  the  Court  of  Appeals  to  con- 
sider these questions in the first instance.2 

B 
Weyerhaeuser  also  contends  that,  even  if  Unit  1  could
be  properly  classified  as  critical  habitat  for  the  dusky
gopher  frog,  the  Service  should  have  excluded  it  from
designation under Section 4(b)(2) of the ESA.  That provi-
sion  requires  the  Secretary  to  “tak[e]  into  consideration 
the  economic  impact  . . .  of  specifying  any  particular  area
as  critical  habitat”  and  authorizes  him  to  “exclude  any 
area  from  critical  habitat  if  he  determines  that  the  bene-
fits  of  such  exclusion  outweigh  the  benefits  of  specifying 
such  area  as  part  of  the  critical  habitat.”    16  U. S. C. 

—————— 

2 Because  we  hold  that  an  area  is  eligible  for  designation  as  critical
habitat under Section 4(a)(3)(A)(i) only if it is habitat for the species, it
is not necessary to consider the landowners’ argument that land cannot 
be  “essential  for  the  conservation  of  the  species,”  and  thus  cannot 
satisfy the statutory definition of unoccupied critical habitat, if it is not
habitat  for  the  species.    See  Brief  for  Petitioner  27–28;  Brief  for  Re-
spondent Markle Interests, LLC, et al. in Support of Petitioner 28–31.