Opinion ID: 170421
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dixie National Forest Plan

Text: The Barney Top Project is located in the two million acre Dixie National Forest in Southern Utah. The Dixie National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan, adopted in 1986, guides management activities in the Dixie National Forest. The Plan established management objectives for preserving forests of different age classes and for maintaining the goshawk population. The Plan provides a general direction to [p]lan timber harvest on a drainage by drainage basis. [1] Aplt. App., vol. 1 at 141. Specifically, the Plan states that a portion of [trees in] each drainage should be in each age class, [s]even to ten percent should be managed as old growth, . . . [and t]he remainder should be more or less evenly distributed in the other ageclasses. [2] Id. The Plan also sets at 40 pairs the minimum viable population for the goshawk, a species of hawk considered a management indicator species that is dependent on old growth trees for its habitat. Pursuant to the Plan, the goshawk population is to be monitored annual[ly] if [the goshawk] population is near minimum level, or every 2-5 years in project areas, or whenever a 10% total declining goshawk population size over a 3 year period presents a variation which would cause further evaluation and/or change in management direction. Id. at 142. In response to declining goshawk populations, the Forest Service amended the Plan in March of 2000 to include the Utah Northern Goshawk Conservation Strategy (the Conservation Strategy). The Conservation Strategy is a product of the cooperative effort of the Utah National Forests, the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to manage goshawk habitat in accordance with the recommendations found in the two leading scientific studies on the subject: Management Recommendations for the Northern Goshawk in the Southwestern United States (the Reynolds Report) and Habitat Assessment and Management Recommendations for the Northern Goshawk in the State of Utah (the Graham Report). See Aple. Supp. App. at 7-10, 48. This amendment to the Plan is sometimes referred to as the Goshawk Amendment.