Opinion ID: 2737007
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Grizzly Bear

Text: The agency analyzed the impacts of the Soldier Addition Project within the geographic scope of three grizzly bear subunits that touch the project area (approximately 129 square miles), and the Spotted Bear Project with respect to three other subunits (approximately 115 square miles). Like a LAU, a grizzly bear subunit for the Flathead National Forest approximates a female’s home range and includes a distribution of habitat by season and elevation. Also like a LAU, the bear management units and subunits were developed several years ago by an interagency committee and are not project-specific. Wild Swan argues the Forest Service should have evaluated the cumulative effects with respect to the larger 14 FRIENDS OF THE WILD SWAN V. WEBER Bear Management Unit (BMU), rather than the smaller subunits, relying on our decision in Selkirk, 336 F.3d at 958–60. The agency explains, however, that national forests in different ecosystems divide grizzly units differently, thus necessitating different approaches to analyzing cumulative effects depending on the particular forest/ecosystem. For example, in Selkirk, this court approved a NEPA analysis at the BMU level, but in that smaller ecosystem each BMU approximated the size of a female grizzly’s home range. Id. at 960; see also id. at 949 (Selkirk Mountains divided into ten BMUs; Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee “considered that each unit would provide an appropriate area in which to monitor and analyze the bears”). In contrast, the Flathead National Forest is part of the 5.7 million acre Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, and within this larger ecosystem, each subunit approximates a female grizzly’s home range.2 The agency further points out that if it analyzed the cumulative effects at the BMU level instead, the analysis area would be approximately 800 square miles, which would be impractically large and would dilute the project’s apparent environmental impact. See Selkirk, 336 F.3d at 960 (expanding the analysis area could dilute the effects of proposed project). As with the lynx, the selection of these boundaries for analyzing the cumulative effects on the grizzly bear was neither arbitrary nor capricious and Wild Swan has not 2 Although Wild Swan also argues that these subunits were to be used only to measure compliance with a road access amendment to the forest plan, the Biological Opinion the Forest Service obtained from the USFWS indicated that the subunits were “the basic scale for the analysis of impacts associated with access management and vegetation management projects.” FRIENDS OF THE WILD SWAN V. WEBER 15 demonstrated serious questions or a likelihood of prevailing on this claim.