Opinion ID: 3033084
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: On important summer and winter range, ade-

Text: quate thermal and hiding cover will be maintained to support the habitat potential. 2. An environmental analysis for project work will include a cover analysis. The cover analysis should be done on a drainage or elk herd unit basis. . . . 3. Subject to hydrologic and other resource con- straints, elk summer range will be maintained at 35 percent or greater hiding cover and areas of winter 10420 NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS COUNCIL v. USFS range will be maintained at 25 percent or greater thermal cover in drainages or elk herd units. 4. Implement an aggressive road management program to maintain or improve big game security. . . .[7] 1 [1] The 2001 EIS describes the hiding cover standard as “not [a] very meaningful” measure of the Forest Service’s duty to provide for elk security in the Helena National Forest and Elkhorn Wildlife Unit. It is well-settled that the Forest Service’s failure to comply with the provisions of a Forest Plan is a violation of NFMA. As NFMA makes plain, “[r]esource plans, permits, contracts, and other instruments for the use and occupancy of National Forest System lands shall be consistent with the land management plans.” 16 U.S.C. § 1604(i); see also Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain v. Alexander, 303 F.3d 1059, 1062 (9th Cir. 2002) (“Specific projects, such as the Grade/Dukes timber sale, must be analyzed by the Forest Service and the analysis must show that each project is consistent with the plan.”); Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain v. U.S. Forest Serv., 137 F.3d 1372, 1377-78 (9th Cir. 1998) (holding that the Forest Service was not in compliance with NFMA where its site-specific project was inconsistent with the forest plan of the entire forest); Friends of Southeast’s Future, 153 F.3d at 1068 n.4 (“16 U.S.C. § 1604(i) plainly imposes a legal obligation on the Forest Service to ensure that timber sales are consistent with the relevant Forest Plan.”). Our scope of review does not include attempting to discern 7 We refer to each of these standards as Big Game Standard #1, #2, #3, or #4. We recite only the beginning of Big Game Standard #4, which continues and provides a maximum open road density for big game hunting season that depends on the percentage of hiding cover in an area. NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS COUNCIL v. USFS 10421 which, if any, of a validly-enacted Forest Plan’s requirements the agency thinks are relevant or meaningful. If the Forest Service thinks any provision of the 1986 HNF Plan is no longer relevant, the agency should propose amendments to the HNF Plan altering its standards, in a process complying with NEPA and NFMA, rather than discount its importance in environmental compliance documents. 2 [2] The administrative record shows that there are 14,112 acres of potential hiding cover in the 45,675 acre Sheep Creek elk herd unit or drainage, and that the proposed project would subtract 620 acres, leaving 13,492 acres of hiding cover. NEC does not dispute these figures. Rather, NEC takes issue with the Forest Service’s calculation denominator: the area over which the agency determined the hiding cover percentage. The question is whether we can reasonably discern from the record that the Forest Service complied with the HNF Plan’s Big Game minimum hiding cover standard, HNF Plan Big Game Standard #3, and thereby complied with NFMA. Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n, 463 U.S. at 43 (holding that courts must “ ‘uphold a decision of less than ideal clarity if the agency’s path may reasonably be discerned’ ” (quoting Bowman Transp., Inc. v. Arkansas-Best Freight Sys., 419 U.S. 281, 286 (1974)). We are unable to determine from the record that the agency is complying with the forest plan standard. The HNF Plan’s hiding cover standard can be read to require the hiding cover percentage be calculated over the entire elk herd unit or drainage, or only over the summer range portion of that elk herd unit.8 However, the Elkhorn Project EIS and ROD did not cal- 8 NEC argues that the hiding cover analysis should have been completed over the entire Sheep Creek herd unit, or 45,675 acres, because the standard must “be maintained at 35 percent or greater . . . in drainages or elk herd units.” If the 45,675 acre Sheep Creek herd unit or drainage was used 10422 NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS COUNCIL v. USFS culate hiding cover over either: The EIS does not include a hiding cover calculation for the Sheep Creek elk herd’s entire range or drainage, nor does the EIS include a mathematical determination of the Sheep Creek herd’s summer range from which to calculate the hiding cover percentage. Instead, the EIS relied on the fact that about 24,000 acres of the 46,000acre Sheep Creek Elk Herd Unit are within the Helena National Forest and estimated that the Sheep Creek elk herd’s summer range was, as the Forest Service said in its briefing, “roughly equivalent” to the HNF Forest boundary. This 24,000 acre denominator was the baseline from which the agency reached its conclusion that the project complied with the Forest Plan standard. In addition, the 2001 EIS measured hiding cover within the Helena National Forest area that corresponds to the 24,000 acre denominator, but not whether any hiding cover existed in the area inhabited by the Sheep Creek herd beyond the boundary of the Helena National Forest. An agency’s position that is contrary to the clear language of a Forest Plan is not entitled to deference. Friends of Southeast’s Future, 153 F.3d at 1069. Here, the Forest Service’s hiding cover calculations considered only the section of the Sheep Creek elk herd’s range within the boundaries of the Helena National Forest and not the parts of the elk herd’s range located on private or other, non-HNF public lands. The agency’s interpretation is inconsistent with the language of the forest plan: as the calculation denominator, the hiding cover percentage would be thirty percent, under the HNF Plan minimum percentage of thirty-five percent, before the effects from the proposed project. The Forest Service argues that only the “summer range” portion of the elk herd unit need be included in the hiding cover calculation for it to comply with the hiding cover standard, because the thirty-five percent minimum is only required over the herd’s summer range (“elk summer range will be maintained at 35 percent or greater hiding cover”). The Forest Service’s interpretation of the Forest Plan language in this regard is not plainly erroneous or facially inconsistent with the Plan’s language. See Forest Guardians, 329 F.3d at 1099. NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS COUNCIL v. USFS 10423 An environmental analysis for project work will include a cover analysis. The cover analysis should be done on a drainage or elk herd unit basis. . . . Subject to hydrologic and other resource constraints, elk summer range will be maintained at 35 percent or greater hiding cover . . . in drainages or elk herd units. (emphasis added). The hiding cover standard does not allow the Forest Service to exclude private and other non-HNF public lands within the Sheep Creek elk herd’s range from its hiding cover calculation perimeters, as the agency did in the Elkhorn project EIS. [3] In Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain v. U.S. Forest Service, the Forest Plan of the Payette National Forest required the Forest Service to show that any approved projects would leave five-percent old growth forest within each affected “pileated woodpecker’s home range.” 137 F.3d at 1377-78. The Forest Service concluded that the approved project would meet the Forest Plan standard by calculating the minimum old-growth percentage using the area of the proposed timber sale rather than the woodpecker’s range. Id. We reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Forest Service, holding that, inter alia, the agency “did not demonstrate that the Grade/Dukes project would be consistent with the Payette LRMP, and thus it failed to comply with the NFMA.” Id. at 1378. As in Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain v. U.S. Forest Service, in the 2001 EIS in this case, the Forest Service used an incorrect denominator in attempting to comply with the Forest Plan standard, calculating the Sheep Creek elk herd’s hiding cover over only the sections of the Sheep Creek elk herd within the Helena National Forest boundaries, rather than calculating the percentage over the Sheep Creek elk herd’s “drainage or elk herd unit.” The EIS thus did not ensure that the Elkhorn project would comply with the HNF Plan and failed to comply with NFMA. 10424 NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS COUNCIL v. USFS Under NFMA, the Forest Service calculations need not be perfect. Forest Guardians, 329 F.3d at 1099. However, we must still be able reasonably to ascertain from the record that the Forest Service is in compliance with the HNF Plan standard. SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 196-197 (1947) (“If the administrative action is to be tested by the basis upon which it purports to rest, that basis must be set forth with such clarity as to be understandable. It will not do for a court to be compelled to guess at the theory underlying the agency’s action; nor can a court be expected to chisel that which must be precise from what the agency has left vague and indecisive.”). In this case, we cannot tell from the administrative record whether or not the Forest Service complied with the hiding cover standard. The Forest Service has given several substantially varying perimeters of how it measures whether the Sheep Creek elk herd’s hiding cover standard is met. In contrast to its EIS calculation, the Forest Service asserts in its briefing that the Sheep Creek elk herd’s summer range is actually 29,591 acres, but that the effect of the proposed project will still leave the herd with forty-three percent hiding cover on its summer range. In contrast to that figure, the record also includes two previous Forest Service calculations of the Sheep Creek summer range, in 1995 and 1996, respectively, as being 34,220 acres. Previous hiding cover analyses done over the Sheep Creek elk herd and using the entire elk herd unit as its denominator had concluded that the elk herd’s hiding cover was below the thirty-five percent minimum set by the HNF Plan.9 As recently as 1995-96, the Forest Service concluded that the Helena National Forest was generally lacking in sufficient hiding cover, and noted that “it is very difficult for most elk herd units on the Deerlodge and Helena 9 Both a 1995 Environmental Assessment (“EA”) and 1996 EA listed the Sheep Creek herd unit as having twenty-two percent hiding cover. Both of these earlier analyses determined hiding cover generally, for an average of all seasons, without calculating the summer and winter range cover, because the analyses were done to determine compliance with HNF Plan Big Game Standard #4, which sets the standard for hiding cover as a ratio to open road density and does not require a summer/winter calculation. NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS COUNCIL v. USFS 10425 Forests to meet Forest Plan standards due to inherently low cover and a high degree of access.” The Forest Service has not presented any rational explanation for its calculation change and its varying calculations do not assist us in our attempt to discern whether the agency has complied with the HNF Plan. [4] Our review of the record did not disclose any other basis for the Forest Service’s claim that it ensured that the project complied with the standard. The two maps of the area do not serve as documentation of how the Forest Service reached its 24,000 acre calculation in the EIS, which in any event the Service has now disavowed, or the Forest Service’s more recent 29,591 acre calculation. Neither map has a legend, an accompanying study, or any other explanation for how the summer range figure was calculated by the Forest Service.10 Given the Forest Service’s contradictory calculations and the otherwise opaque nature of the record on the factual basis for the Forest Service’s analysis of its compliance with the hiding cover standard, we cannot reasonably determine that the Forest Service has complied with the HNF Plan. Nat’l Wildlife Federation, 384 F.3d at 1170 (holding that agencies must articulate a “rational connection between the facts found and the conclusions made”).