Opinion ID: 502245
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prudential Dimensions

Text: 61 We pause only briefly on the district court's final ground for restricting the Humane Society's standing: that the claims advanced by the Society fell outside the zone of interests of the Endangered Species Act and the two Refuge Acts. In this inquiry, we gain much guidance from the Supreme Court's most recent explication of this prudential limitation: 62 The zone of interest test is a guide for deciding whether, in view of Congress' evident intent to make agency action presumptively reviewable, a particular plaintiff should be heard to complain of a particular agency decision.... The test denies a right of review if the plaintiff's interests are so marginally related to or inconsistent with the purposes implicit in the statute that it cannot reasonably be assumed that Congress intended to permit the suit. The test is not meant to be especially demanding; in particular, there need be no indication of congressional purpose to benefit the would be plaintiff. 63 Clarke v. Securities Industry Association, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 750, 757, 93 L.Ed.2d 757 (1987) (footnotes omitted). Clarke establishes that there need only be a plausible relationship between the interests of the litigants and the policies embodied in the overall context of the statutes at issue. Id. 107 S.Ct. at 758-59. 64 Protecting the human aesthetic interest in viewing live animals and birds plainly bears a plausible relationship to the policies embodied in the two Refuge Acts. The two Refuge Acts have as their principal aim the protection of wildlife. See S.Rep. No. 1858, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. 1 (1962); H.R.Rep. No. 1473, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. 3 (1962) (on Refuge Recreation Act); H.R.Rep. No. 1168, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1965) (on Refuge Administration Act). The House Report on the Refuge Recreation Act demonstrates the linkage between wildlife preservation and wildlife appreciation: it enumerates among the contemplated uses of refuges the observation of wildlife in its native habitat, photography, sightseeing, picnicking, camping, swimming and fishing, and boating. H.R.Rep. No. 1473, supra, at 2-3 (stating as well that [t]he purpose of the bill ... is to permit the enjoyment of national fish and wildlife conservation areas by a larger segment of our population). See also Animal Welfare Institute, 561 F.2d at 1007. Here again the district court's decision directly resulted from its classification of the interest of Society members as recreational, rather than the more apt description, used by the Supreme Court in Sierra Club, as aesthetic. The fact that the Refuge Recreation Act does delimit permissible recreational activities on refuges therefore should not disentitle these plaintiffs, whose concern as animal and bird watchers is hardly at odds with the substantive prescriptions of the Acts, to sue under them. 65 For similar reasons, the interests of Humane Society members also fall within the zone of interests protected by the Endangered Species Act. That statute aims to provide for conservation, protection and propagation of endangered species of fish and wildlife ..., S.Rep. No. 307, 93d Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1973), primarily by requiring the Wildlife Service to analyze proposed federal actions so as to evaluate these actions' potential impact on threatened or endangered species. See 16 U.S.C. Sec. 1533(b). There is no dispute that endangered species exist within the refuges. As we held in National Audubon Society v. Hester, 801 F.2d 405, 407 n. 2 (D.C.Cir.1986), the activities of observing and studying such wild animals and birds are within the zone of interests protected by the ESA. The Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion in Japan Whaling Association v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U.S. 221, 106 S.Ct. 2860, 2866 n. 4, 92 L.Ed.2d 166 (1986), holding that whale-watching and whale-studying fell within the zone of interests of two statutory amendments designed to guard against the depletion of certain species of fish. 28 66