Opinion ID: 181487
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Conservation of Bighorn Sheep as a Purpose of the Wilderness Act

Text: As stated above, the Wilderness Act prohibits structure[s] or installation[s] unless they are necessary to meet the minimum requirements of a purpose of the Wilderness Act. 16 U.S.C. § 1133(c). We first must decide if the Service's determination that a purpose of the Act includes conservation of the bighorn sheep is unambiguously contrary to the language of the Wilderness Act. If so, the structures violate the Act, and we will give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress. Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 846, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). If not, we must then determine what level of deference to grant to the Service's interpretation, a determination that depends upon whether the Service's interpretation has the force of law. Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U.S. 576, 587, 120 S.Ct. 1655, 146 L.Ed.2d 621 (2000). The Act begins with a broad statement of purpose: In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States ..., leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. 16 U.S.C. § 1131(a). The Act defines wilderness as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain, and as an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, ... which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions. Id. § 1131(c). The Act also states that the agency administering any area designated as wilderness must administer such area for such other purposes for which it may have been established as also to preserve its wilderness character. Id. § 1133(b). Had Congress stopped there, these strongly worded phrases would have suggested that wilderness areas were to remain untouchednot merely untouched by development but, literally, untouched by humans. But Congress did not mandate that the Service preserve the wilderness in a museum diorama, one that we might observe only from a safe distance, behind a brass railing and a thick glass window. Instead, Congress stated that the wilderness was to be preserved as wilderness and made accessible to people, devoted to the public purposes of recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use. Id. Congress was specific about what it understood might be necessary to preserve the wilderness for such public purposes. Congress expressly authorized structures, motorized vehicles, and temporary roads if such things are necessary to meet the minimum requirements for administering the area, id. § 1133(c); indeed, the Act permits, under certain circumstances, aircraft and motorboat use and even mining, id. § 1133(d). Those uses are incompatible with a museum notion of wilderness. Read as a whole, the Act gives conflicting policy directives to the Service in administering the area. The Service is charged with maintaining the wilderness character of the land, providing opportunities for wilderness recreation, managing fire and insect risk, and even facilitating mineral extraction activities. High Sierra, 390 F.3d at 647. It is charged with simultaneously devoting the land to conservation and protecting and preserving the wilderness in its natural condition. 16 U.S.C. §§ 1131(c), 1133(b). We cannot discern an unambiguous instruction to the Service. Rather, those competing instructions call for the application of judgment and discretion. We may be able to identify violations at the margins but, in this case, the Act is not so clear that we can identify precisely what the Service must do and must not do. We conclude that the purpose of the Wilderness Act with regard to conservation is ambiguous. See High Sierra, 390 F.3d at 647-48 (Although we believe that Congress intended to enshrine the long-term preservation of wilderness areas as the ultimate goal of the Act, the diverse, and sometimes conflicting list of responsibilities imposed on administering agencies renders Congress's intent arguably ambiguous.). Our decision in Wilderness Society v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service, 353 F.3d 1051 (9th Cir.2003) (en banc), is not to the contrary. In Wilderness Society, the Service initiated a sockeye salmon enhancement project in a freshwater lake, located in the Kenai Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness, that flowed into the Gulf of Alaska. The Service planned to allow a private corporation to capture 10,000 sockeye salmon each year and transport about 10 million eggs to a hatchery outside the Kenai Wilderness. During the spring, the organization planned to return about 6 million salmon to the wilderness and to sell the rest. Id. at 1058. The plaintiffs argued that the corporation's activities fell within the Wilderness Act's ban on all commercial enterprise[s] within a wilderness area (subject to certain exceptions inapplicable in that case). Id. at 1061 (citing 16 U.S.C. § 1133(c)). Looking to the common meaning of the term and to the purpose and structure of the Act, we held that the corporation's activities unambiguously fell within the Act's prohibition on commercial enterprises. [6] Id. at 1062. Wilderness Society is easily distinguishable from the present case. There, we gave effect to the unambiguously expressed intent that, subject to certain inapplicable exceptions, commercial enterprises were prohibited. The Service argued that its interpretation of the undefined term commercial enterprise was entitled to some deference but we held that, because the primary purpose and effect of the action was purely commercial, no deference was due. Here, by contrast, we must analyze conflicting instructions in the Wilderness Act: The Service must preserve the wilderness character of the area while at the same time providing for recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use. 16 U.S.C. § 1133(b). Both the specific statutory mandate that conservation is a valid purpose of the Act and the historical focus of the area on the preservation of bighorn sheep render this case vastly different from the situation we analyzed in Wilderness Society. Because we conclude that the term conservation is ambiguous, we turn to the question of what level of deference to grant the Service's interpretation of conservation as including wildlife conservation and, more specifically, conservation of bighorn sheep. United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 229-30, 121 S.Ct. 2164, 150 L.Ed.2d 292 (2001); Christensen, 529 U.S. at 587, 120 S.Ct. 1655. We apply Chevron deference when it appears that Congress delegated authority to the agency generally to make rules carrying the force of law, and that the agency interpretation claiming deference was promulgated in the exercise of that authority. Mead, 533 U.S. at 226-27, 121 S.Ct. 2164. It is fair to assume generally that Congress contemplates administrative action with the effect of law when it provides for a relatively formal administrative procedure tending to foster the fairness and deliberation that should underlie a pronouncement of such force. Id. at 230, 121 S.Ct. 2164. By contrast, [i]nterpretations such as those in opinion letterslike interpretations contained in policy statements, agency manuals, and enforcement guidelines, all of which lack the force of lawdo not warrant Chevron -style deference. Christensen, 529 U.S. at 587, 120 S.Ct. 1655. Such views, ... even if not authoritative for purposes of Chevron, are entitled to so-called Skidmore deference insofar as they `constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance.' Vigil v. Leavitt, 381 F.3d 826, 835 (9th Cir.2004) (quoting Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140, 65 S.Ct. 161, 89 L.Ed. 124 (1944)). Here, the 1997 Management Plan was subject to public review and comment and was intended to provide long-term management guidance. But, other than stating that the plan was subject to public review and comment, the record is bereft of any other information describing the formality of the administrative procedure that fostered the plan. We are not convinced that the management guidance included in the plan carries the force of law. On this record, we are unable to distinguish with certainty the plan from interpretations contained in policy statements, agency manuals, and enforcement guidelines, all of which lack the force of law. Christensen, 529 U.S. at 587, 120 S.Ct. 1655. We therefore apply Skidmore deference. Under that standard, the deference to be accorded ... depends upon `the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.' Wilderness Soc'y, 353 F.3d at 1060 (quoting Mead, 533 U.S. at 228, 121 S.Ct. 2164). The plan demonstrated consistency in recounting the history of Kofa and its conservation role in western Arizona. Management Plan at 2. Preservation of the bighorn sheep in the area was one of the principal motivations for President Roosevelt's establishing the Kofa Game Range in 1939. From the beginning, federal agencies cooperated with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to protect the bighorn sheep. [7] The plan reiterated that preserving desert bighorn sheep was an important component of the management of the area and noted that the management theme of the area is devoted [t]o counter dwindling populations of desert bighorn sheep and to continue important efforts on behalf of the bighorn sheep. Id. at 2-3. The plan also demonstrated thoroughness in addressing the new requirements that the wilderness designation would impose on the goal of conserving bighorn sheep. It concluded: There is no question that management of this species remains as one of the princip[al] missions of the Kofa [National Wildlife Refuge].... However, the new considerations relative to the Wilderness designations require the Service and the BLM to review management techniques and their compatibility with wilderness principles. Id. at 36. The plan acknowledged that the Service is responsible to carry out a dual, but nonetheless interrelated, role of managing for bighorn sheep within the context of wilderness. Id. at 37. The plan further recognized that the Service had to maintain the natural character of the landscape consistent with the Wilderness Act, a duty that required use of the minimum tool necessary to accomplish the work and technologies ... as unobtrusive as possible. Id. at 37, 39. The plan continued: The needs of the species and the requirements of the Act are not necessarily in conflict. In fact, the habitat management work done to benefit bighorn sheep, including water development, could have a positive influence on the natural cycles of predation and succession for a diversity of life in the desert without detraction of wilderness attributes and values. Id. at 39-40. In light of the historical purpose of the area to preserve bighorn sheep and the explicit purpose of conservation in the Act, we find that the Service's reasoning was thorough, valid, consistent, and persuasive. We defer to the Service's interpretation in the Management Plan that conservation of the bighorn sheep is consistent with the purposes of the Wilderness Act.