Opinion ID: 2824567
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Claims Challenging the 1994/1997 PEIS

Text: The district court dismissed Claims One and Two, holding that WildEarth had not shown that any of its members had a concrete injury caused by the PEIS. But the injuries Molde alleges are concrete enough, and are sufficiently causally related to APHIS’s failure to update the PEIS, to support WildEarth’s standing for Claims One and Two. “An association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right, the interests at stake are germane to the organization’s purpose, and neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 181 (citing Hunt v. Wash. State Apple Advert. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343 (1977)). As to the second and third prongs, it is clear that Molde’s interest in recreational and aesthetic enjoyment of predators in the Nevada wilderness is related to WildEarth’s purposes of “protecting and restoring wildlife” and “carnivore protection.” And neither WildEarth’s claims for procedural violations of NEPA nor its requested relief require the participation of any individual WildEarth members. The only dispute is over the first prong—whether the harm to Molde satisfies the concrete injury-in-fact, causation, and redressability requirements for standing. We therefore focus on those issues. Molde’s injury is his reduced recreational and aesthetic enjoyment of areas in Nevada impacted by NWSP’s predator damage management programs. His declaration names specific wilderness areas in Nevada that he has visited and has specific plans to visit again. The declaration states that WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA 13 NWSP’s predator control negatively impacts Molde’s enjoyment of those areas by causing him to curtail his recreational activities and reducing his likelihood of seeing predators, including coyotes and ravens. This satisfies the injury-in-fact requirement. See Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. Kempthorne, 588 F.3d 701, 707–08 (9th Cir. 2009) (holding that a declaration from plaintiffs that they have viewed animals in the affected region previously, enjoy doing so, and have plans to return satisfies the requirement for a concrete injury in fact with geographic nexus to the challenged action). Because WildEarth seeks to enforce a procedural right under NEPA, the requirements for causation and redressability are relaxed. W. Watersheds Project, 632 F.3d at 485. Under that relaxed standard, WildEarth’s allegations, based on Molde’s experience, are sufficient to support standing. WildEarth alleges that APHIS implements its predator damage management programs pursuant to the 1994/1997 PEIS, and that APHIS has improperly failed to update that PEIS. The Record of Decision for the final PEIS specifically states that APHIS will rely on information from the final PEIS for NEPA compliance. 60 Fed. Reg. 13,399, 13,400. Indeed, the Nevada environmental assessment did incorporate the 1994/1997 PEIS. This is a sufficient causal link between APHIS’s alleged procedural violations of NEPA and Molde’s injury to satisfy the relaxed causation requirement for procedural claims. See Salmon Spawning, 545 F.3d at 1229 (holding that causation is satisfied under the relaxed requirements for procedural claims when “[t]he asserted injury is not too tenuously connected to the agencies’ failure” to take action). Contrary to APHIS’s arguments, the fact that the PEIS also applies to programs in states for which WildEarth has 14 WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA not submitted member declarations does not prevent WildEarth from challenging the continued use of the PEIS. WildEarth has adequately alleged that Molde’s injury in Nevada is caused by the failure to update the PEIS, which is sufficient to allow WildEarth to challenge that failure to update. That the PEIS also applies to other geographic regions that Molde does not visit is irrelevant to the standing analysis. See Res. Ltd., Inc. v. Robertson, 35 F.3d 1300, 1303 (9th Cir. 1994) (“[I]f plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge a non-site-specific EIS, the program as a whole could never be reviewed. To the extent that the plan predetermines the future, it represents a concrete injury that plaintiffs must, at some point, have standing to challenge.”); Idaho Conservation League v. Mumma, 956 F.2d 1508, 1515-18 (9th Cir. 1992) (holding that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge a non-site-specific EIS that caused their injury in fact); see also Alaska Ctr. for Env’t v. Browner, 20 F.3d 981, 985 (9th Cir. 1994) (upholding standing for challenge to statewide failure to regulate water quality when the plaintiffs alleged specific injury relating to some, but not all, streams within Alaska). Molde’s injury also satisfies the relaxed redressability requirement for procedural claims. This requirement is satisfied when “the relief requested—that the agency follow the correct procedures—may influence the agency’s ultimate decision.” Salmon Spawning, 545 F.3d at 1226. This relaxed redressability standard governs procedural challenges to programmatic actions as well as to specific implementing actions. See Cottonwood Envtl. Law Ctr. v. U.S. Forest Serv., Nos. 13-35624, 13-35631, 2015 WL 3756708, at  (9th Cir. June 17, 2015) (“As in Salmon Spawning, Cottonwood’s allegation of a procedural injury relaxes its burden of showing causation and redressability. WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA 15 Cottonwood need not show that [the procedures sought] would lead to a different result at either the programmatic or project-specific level.”) (internal citation omitted). Here, updating the PEIS could influence APHIS’s predator damage management in Nevada, which is sufficient to satisfy the redressability requirement for standing for a procedural claim. Because Molde would have standing to bring Claims One and Two on his own, and WildEarth also satisfies the other associational standing requirements, WildEarth has standing for Claims One and Two. 4