Opinion ID: 501787
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Revegetation Success Standards for Grazing and Pastureland

Text: 155 Rejecting NWF's challenge, repeated here, the district court upheld the Secretary's revegetation regulation for land with a post-mining grazing or pastureland use, 30 C.F.R. Sec. 816.116(b)(1). 27 That regulation aims to ensure reclamation success by requiring, at a minimum, that the ground cover and production of living plants on the revegetated area shall be at least equal to that of a reference area or such other success standards approved by the regulatory authority. Id. 156 NWF argues first that soil surveys alone are inadequate to demonstrate the success of grazing land reclamation, and second that actual grazing must be required because it is the only reliable measure of range land revegetation success. The district court agreed that the use of a soil survey alone is insufficient, but found that the Secretary so recognized. PSMRL II (Round III), 620 F.Supp. at 1563. In this court too, the Secretary of the Interior has represented that the regulation does not contemplate reliance on a soil survey or any other method not based on actual production to establish vegetative success. Brief for the Secretary of the Interior as Appellee at 23-24; see also 49 FED.REG. 40148 (1983) (preamble to final rule). Thus, there appears to be no contest over the insufficiency of a soil survey. The genuine issue concerns the actual production method necessary or proper to determine vegetation success. 157 For its second point, NWF relies most heavily on a National Academy of Science Report on mined land reclamation, National Research Council, Surface Mining: Soil, Coal, and Society 124-26 (1981). We comprehend that study, as did the Secretary and the district court, to conclude that evaluation of the productivity of soil reclaimed for grazing must be based on measurements of actual production. But we do not find in the study, any more than the Secretary or the district court did, insistence that grazing is the only acceptable method of establishing range land revegetation success. 28 In sum, we cannot say that the Secretary acted unreasonably in declining to require grazing to test reclamation success on sites designated as post-mining range or pastureland; it was sufficient, we hold, for the Secretary to require the use of a reference area comparison or other approved success standard that measures actual vegetation production. 158