Opinion ID: 3034729
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: goshawk habitat components

Text: Native Ecosystems asserts that as to the goshawks, the project is highly controversial and highly uncertain because the Forest Service failed to abide by a 1992 Forest Service report, “Management Recommendations for the Northern Goshawk in the Southwestern United States” (“Reynolds Report”). According to Native Ecosystems, the EA failed to address the Reynolds Report goshawk habitat recommendations pertaining to old growth, post-fledgling family areas, and canopy cover. This argument fails because the Forest Service referenced the Reynolds Report multiple times in the various Jimtown NEPA documents and specifically addressed each of these habitat recommendations. [5] Although the Reynolds Report recommends maintaining a certain percentage of old growth in a goshawk’s home range, it is significant that no old growth exists in the project area. As a result, the Jimtown Project is not capable of negatively impacting the old growth component of the Jimtown goshawk home range. It can hardly be said that a controversy or uncertainty exists under these circumstances. More pointedly, Native Ecosystems’s concern that the Forest Service fails to demonstrate in the EA that it has set aside sufficient old growth habitat for goshawks ignores the very purpose of the Jimtown Project—creation of a landscape that permits large trees to mature into old growth. The DN/FONSI explained that “[o]ne of the goals of the project is to create a stand structure that will allow old-growth to develop on the site over the long term and remain intact in the face of fire,” an objective that precisely meets Native Ecosystems’s concern. [6] Both the Biological Evaluation and DN/FONSI cite the Reynolds Report habitat designations, including the nesting, post-fledgling, and foraging area acreage recommendations, and discuss their impact at length before concluding that the Jimtown Project will not deprive the nearby goshawk home 15150 NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS v. USFS ranges of these necessary components. Native Ecosystems complains that the Forest Service failed to specifically delineate a post-fledgling family area to be preserved around the 2000 and 2002 goshawk nest stand 150 yards from the Jimtown Project area. The Biological Evaluation and DN/FONSI establish that the Forest Service took a hard look at the available post-fledgling family area habitat in the vicinity of the Jimtown Project. Indeed, the Forest Service’s point-by-point response to Native Ecosystems’s post-SIR comments underscores our conclusion that the Forest Service took a hard look and fairly considered the Reynolds Report habitat recommendations: [T]he area proposed for thinning is not good [postfledgling family area] habitat . . . . The key unburned habitat needed to sustain breeding and provide core [post-fledgling family areas] for young goshawks is in the dense, multi-layered mature forest in the nest stand itself and in other such stands spread across north and north east slopes south and west of the project area. These stands are outside the proposed thinning area. As a result, the best habitat contributing to local [post-fledgling family areas] will be retained, and goshawks will be able to continue fledging young in the 2000/2002 nest stand. [7] Finally, Native Ecosystems urges that the Forest Service’s failure to disclose the canopy closure in the area before and after the project makes the impact of the project on goshawk habitat “highly uncertain.” Although the NEPA documents did not specify percentages of canopy cover in the same manner as delineated in the Reynolds Report, the Forest Service did not ignore the impact of changes to canopy closure in the project area. Nothing in the law or the science mandates wholesale adoption of the details of the Reynolds Report. Ultimately, while the Forest Service concluded that NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS v. USFS 15151 the project would reduce suitable habitat by about 720 acres, due in part to reduced canopy cover as a result of the thinning component of the project, the project would leave intact sufficient acreage to provide for resident goshawks—about 6,780 acres of mostly forested habitat. [8] The Forest Service’s goshawk habitat analysis and consideration of the Reynolds Report demonstrate the project is neither highly controversial nor highly uncertain. Native Ecosystems’s effort to identify conflicts between the Jimtown Project and the Reynolds Report does not raise substantial questions that would trigger the need for an EIS. In fact, as the Reynolds Report explained, current forest conditions put the existing goshawk habitat in jeopardy and thus the proposed thinning and burning would actually be necessary to sustain goshawks and their prey. The push-pull situation of the goshawk is a reality not a fiction. While the Reynolds Report outlines ideal goshawk habitat conditions, including optimum old-growth, post-fledgling, and canopy cover prescriptions, the Report also recognizes that stand-replacing fires wipe out these critical habitat components in their entirety. The proposed Jimtown Project seeks to balance the sometimes conflicting goshawk habitat needs as outlined in the Reynolds Report, and thereby makes a reasoned and reasonable choice between the competing goals of preserving the goshawk’s current habitat and promoting a sustainable, longterm habitat for the goshawk.