page_title: Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon / Background
caption_attribution_description: Red-cockaded Woodpecker Picoides borealis, photograph
context_page_description: Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, 515 U.S. 687, is a US Supreme Court case, decided by a 6-3 vote, in which the plaintiffs challenged the Interior Department's interpretation of the word "harm" in the Endangered Species Act.
context_section_description: The Secretary of the Interior and the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service director interpreted the word harm in the definition of take in Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act to mean an act that actually kills or injures wildlife. Under the statutory language of the Interior Department Regulation, the act may include significant habitat modification or degradation if it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering.
  The Interpretation of Section 9(a)(1) of the Endangered Species Act to provide the following protection for endangered species:
  "Except as provided in sections 1535(g)(2) and 1539 of this title, with respect to any endangered species of fish or wildlife listed pursuant to section 1533 of this title it is unlawful for any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to:
  (B) take any such species within the United States or the territorial sea of the  United States.
  Section 3(19) of the Act defines the statutory term take:
  "The term take means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.
  The Act does not further define the terms it uses to define take. The Interior Department regulations that implement the statute, however, define the statutory term harm:
  Harm in the definition of take in the Act means an act which actually kills or injures wildlife. Such act may include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering."
  The plaintiff was Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, which consisted of various landowners, logging companies, and timber workers in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast. It brought action against the Secretary of the Interior and the director of Fish and Wildlife Service to challenge the interpretation of the term take with regards to the clarification of harm in the Endangered Species Act. It argued that the red-cockaded woodpecker (Leuconotopicus borealis), an endangered species, and the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), a threatened species, had injured them economically by preventing them from conducting commercial business in the forestry industry.
  The defendant was the Fish and Wildlife Director, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's interpretation of the Act and his definition of the word harm.
caption: Red-cockaded woodpecker
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