Opinion ID: 718270
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether impaired breeding is harm.

Text: 48 Pacific Lumber next argues that even if EPIC's scientific evidence of impaired breeding is considered, impaired breeding is not harm to an actual bird, but rather is harm to the population and therefore is legally insufficient to qualify as harm under the ESA, 16 U.S.C. § 1532(19). Pacific Lumber relies on Sweet Home for this argument. 49 Neither the majority nor the concurring opinion in Sweet Home provides any support for Pacific Lumber's argument. The majority opinion did not address whether impaired breeding amounts to harm to the species impaired or whether it harms only the general population. The majority avoided the question. See --- U.S. at ---- n. 13, 115 S.Ct. at 2414 n. 13. The dissent in Sweet Home believed the Secretary's harm regulation was too broad because it included impaired breeding as harm when, in the dissent's view, impaired breeding was harm to a population of animals and not to an actual animal as required by statute. Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2430 (Scalia, J., dissenting). 50 In her concurrence, Justice O'Connor disagreed with the dissent, arguing it was difficult to dismiss the notion that significant impairment of breeding injures living creatures. Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2419 (O'Connor, J., concurring). Noting that the dictionary definition of injure includes impair, Justice O'Connor stated that at least complete impairment of breeding would be injury to the living creature so impaired. The concurrence concluded: 51 In any event, even if impairing an animal's ability to breed were not, in and of itself, an injury to that animal, interference with breeding can cause an animal to suffer other, perhaps more obvious, kinds of injury. 52 Id. (emphasis in original). 53 Most importantly, however, the majority in Sweet Home upheld the facial validity of the Secretary's harm regulation. That regulation defines harm to include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding or sheltering. 50 C.F.R. § 17.3. Thus, under Sweet Home, a habitat modification which significantly impairs the breeding and sheltering of a protected species amounts to harm under the ESA. Accord Rosboro, 50 F.3d at 788. Harm under the ESA, therefore, includes the threat of future harm. Id. We next consider whether there was sufficient evidence of a threat of future harm. 54