Opinion ID: 779237
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Travel Management Issues

Text: 18 Avoid travel management (TM) issues. Each project includes an amendment to exempt it from having to achieve elk habitat effectiveness [HEI] standards of the Forest Plan, page II-18. 19 Plaintiffs argue that this memorandum evidences a clear decision, predating the relevant EA by seven months, to adopt a road density amendment as part of the Darroch-Eagle sale. At most, however, we read the Kempff memorandum to indicate that the Forest Service contemplated waiving the road density standard for Gallatin II timber sale projects, including the Darroch-Eagle sale involved in this appeal, before conducting the Darroch-Eagle EA. However, such contemplation does not amount to a NEPA violation unless the Kempff memorandum committed the Forest Service to the amendments proposed. See Metcalf, 214 F.3d at 1143 (the issue we must decide here is whether the Federal Defendants prepared the EA too late in the decision-making process, i.e., after making an irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resources); Friends of Southeast's Future, 153 F.3d at 1063. 20 It did not. Nothing in the record indicates that the Forest Service made its final decision on the Darroch-Eagle amendment until after conducting its EA. Put another way, the agency was free to decide not to amend the Forest Plan road density standard up until the time it issued its Decision Notice for the Darroch-Eagle timber sale. This contrasts greatly, for example, with the situation faced by this court in Metcalf, in which NEPA review was held to be untimely. See Metcalf, 214 F.3d at 1145. There, the government defendants had signed binding contracts committing project resources before evaluating the project's environmental effects under NEPA. Such a commitment, the court held, hampered NEPA's purpose and prevented the agency from taking the requisite hard look at the environmental consequences of its action. Id. Here, by contrast, the EA served its intended purposes: to force the Forest Service to confront (and to publicize) the environmental consequences of its plan before committing to it. 21 We affirm the district court on this issue.