Opinion ID: 3034729
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: national forest management act claims

Text: NFMA creates a two-step process for the management of our national forests. Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain I, 137 F.3d at 1376. The Forest Service must first develop a Land Resource Management Plan (“Forest Plan”) for each unit of the National Forest System. 16 U.S.C. § 1604(f)(1). For individual management actions within a forest unit, all relevant 15164 NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS v. USFS plans, contracts, or permits must be consistent with each forest’s overall management plan. Id. § 1604(I). [16] In addition, NFMA imposes substantive requirements on the Forest Service’s management of the national forests. Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain I, 137 F.3d at 1376. NFMA requires that forest plans “provide for diversity of plant and animal communities based on the suitability and capability of the specific land area.” 16 U.S.C. § 1604(g)(3)(B). The Forest Service’s NFMA regulations further require: Fish and wildlife habitat shall be managed to maintain viable populations of existing native and desired non-native vertebrate species in the planning area. For planning purposes, a viable population shall be regarded as one which has the estimated numbers and distribution of reproductive individuals to insure its continued existence is well distributed in the planning area. In order to insure that viable populations will be maintained, habitat must be provided to support, at least, a minimum number of reproductive individuals and that habitat must be well distributed so that those individuals can interact with others in the planning area. 36 C.F.R. § 219.19 (2000). The duty to ensure viable populations “applies with special force” to sensitive species. Inland Empire Pub. Lands Council v. U.S. Forest Serv., 88 F.3d 754, 759 (9th Cir. 1996). Native Ecosystems claims the Forest Service failed to comply with the substantive wildlife requirements of the NFMA. Specifically, Native Ecosystems claims the Forest Service failed to ensure goshawk viability, in violation of the NFMA, by failing to discuss forest-wide goshawk population trends and the impacts the Jimtown Project would have on goshawk viability and population trends.15 The 1986 Helena National 15 We do not address Native Ecosystems’s NFMA arguments based on the Helena National Forest’s 1994 Forest Plan Five Year Review because NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS v. USFS 15165 Forest Plan designated goshawks as a management indicator species,16 and the Forest Service considers the goshawk to be a “sensitive species.” As a result, Native Ecosystems contends the Forest Service had a substantive duty under NFMA to ensure forest-wide goshawk viability before approving a project that would impact goshawk habitat. Although Native Ecosystems admits that the Forest Service has monitored goshawks in the Helena National Forest for more than eight years, Native Ecosystems claims this monitoring fails to establish the existence of a viable population of goshawks. The record contains a 2002 Goshawk Nest Monitoring Report that chronicles goshawk sightings and goshawk nests from 1995 through 2002 in the Helena National Forest. The record also contains a 2003 chart listing goshawk sightings and nests from 1992 through 2003. On the basis of these reports, Native Ecosystems claims that there is not a viable population of goshawks in the Helena National Forest, or at least that goshawk viability cannot be presumed based on these charts. According to Native Ecosystems, the Forest Service must positively demonstrate forest-wide goshawk viability before proceeding with the Jimtown Project. See Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain II, 303 F.3d at 1069 (“[C]ompliance with NFMA’s forest-wide species viability requirements is relevant to the lawfulness of any individual timber sale.”). In contrast, the Forest Service views its responsibility under NFMA to ensure the viability of animal species as a duty to the Five Year Review was not part of the administrative record. See supra note 2. 16 The NFMA regulations require the Forest Service to identify management indicator species that will be monitored because the species’ “population changes are believed to indicate the effects of management activities.” 36 C.F.R. § 219.19(a)(1) (2000). “Population trends of the management indicator species will be monitored and relationships to habitat changes determined.” Id. § 219.19(a)(6). 15166 NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS v. USFS ensure adequate habitat for wildlife species, not an obligation to ensure the actual viability of a species in every locale. See 36 C.F.R. § 219.19 (2000) (“[H]abitat shall be managed to maintain viable populations . . . .”); see also id. § 219.19(a)(6) (“Population trends of the management indicator species will be monitored and relationships to habitat changes determined.”). Because the Forest Service concluded that the Jimtown Project will not have a significant effect on goshawk habitat, the Forest Service concludes that the project meets NFMA’s species viability requirement by preserving goshawk habitat. In addition, the Forest Service contends Native Ecosystems misinterpreted the two goshawk observation charts and argues that the charts demonstrate a nearly fifty percent occupancy rate of potential goshawk home ranges. Our case law permits the Forest Service to meet the wildlife species viability requirements by preserving habitat, but only where both the Forest Service’s knowledge of what quality and quantity of habitat is necessary to support the species and the Forest Service’s method for measuring the existing amount of that habitat are reasonably reliable and accurate. Compare Idaho Sporting Cong. v. Thomas, 137 F.3d 1146, 1154 (9th Cir. 1998) (holding that under the circumstances of that case the Forest Service could use habitat as a proxy for population if the Forest Service performed further analysis and showed that “no appreciable habitat disturbance” would result from the planned activity) and Idaho Sporting Cong. v. Rittenhouse, 305 F.3d 957, 967-68, 972-73 (9th Cir. 2002) (holding that use of habitat as a proxy for population monitoring of the management indicator species was arbitrary and capricious where record indicated that the Forest Service’s habitat standard and measurements were erroneous). We recently explained the proxy-on-proxy approach to ensuring species viability under the NFMA: We have, in appropriate cases, allowed the Forest Service to avoid studying the population trends of NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS v. USFS 15167 the Indicator Species by using Indicator Species habitat as a proxy for Indicator Species population trends in a so-called “proxy on proxy” approach. Crucial to this approach, however, is that the methodology for identifying the habitat proxy be sound. If the habitat trend data is flawed, the proxy on proxy result, here population trends, will be equally flawed. Lands Council v. Powell, 395 F.3d 1019, 1036 (9th Cir. 2005) (footnotes and internal citations omitted). [17] The record does not demonstrate any flaws in the methodology used by the Forest Service to identify goshawk habitat. Both the Forest Service and Native Ecosystems endorse the habitat recommendations in the Reynolds Report as the best available science on goshawk habitat. The Forest Service’s habitat analysis revealed that even if the Jimtown Project thinning area is not used by the nearby goshawk pair, there will be ample habitat available to them. A goshawk home range should contain approximately 5,400 acres of foraging habitat. The Jimtown Project will diminish the goshawk foraging habitat in the goshawk home range by approximately 480 acres (720 acres prior to the Jimtown Fire), leaving at least 6,780 acres of suitable foraging habitat in the relevant goshawk home range. The remaining foraging habitat exceeds the Reynolds Report recommendation of 5,400 acres of foraging habitat per goshawk home range. Given that the Jimtown Project area does not contain old growth forest and is designed to create an ecosystem that can support old-growth in the long-term, and given that the NEPA documents incorporate the Reynolds Report habitat recommendations, we conclude that the Forest Service satisfied NFMA’s species viability requirements by demonstrating that adequate goshawk habitat is preserved. While the Forest Service experts predict that goshawks will use the thinned area of the Jimtown Project for foraging, there 15168 NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS v. USFS will still be sufficient foraging habitat even if the goshawks avoid the project area after thinning. The long-term benefit of preventing stand-replacing fires, which completely destroy goshawk habitat, is preferable over any short-term benefit the goshawks might receive from retaining the dense forest structure in the project area. The Forest Service considered the relevant factors and there has not been a clear error of judgment. [18] Consequently, we uphold the agency action under the APA’s arbitrary and capricious standard. AFFIRMED.