Opinion ID: 859088
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Specific Consent Decree in This Case

Text: We now turn to an analysis of the consent decree before us in this case. After Boody, it is indisputable that the Agencies would have had to go through formal procedures if they had sought to implement the changes to Survey and Manage contained in the consent decree on their own. The decree includes changes to species classifications and establishes new exemptions from pre-disturbance surveys; it does “nothing short of amend” Survey and Manage. See Boody, 468 F.3d at 556–57 (internal quotation marks omitted). This consent decree also goes further than the one that we approved in Turtle. 672 F.3d at 1164. As a result, “the practical effect of the district court’s order [there was] not to affect the [challenged] [r]ule . . . except to reduce the incidental take limit for loggerhead turtles back to the preexisting 2004 limits.” Id. The consent decree was simply a stop-gap measure while the agencies amended their regulations through existing administrative procedures. Id. at 1167 (“[T]he Consent Decree merely temporarily restores the status quo ante pending new agency action . . . .” (emphasis added)). By contrast, the consent decree in this case sets the rules for Survey and Manage unless and until the Agencies decide to conduct further analysis and decision making. If the Agencies are satisfied with the version of the Standard as amended by the consent decree, they could simply let it stand indefinitely. Appellees argue that this is not a problem because the compromise reached in the consent decree represents the 14 CONSERVATION NORTHWEST V . SHERMAN implementation of those portions of the 2007 ROD that survived the district court’s order granting summary judgment on Plaintiffs’ NEPA claims. Appellees argue further that because each provision of the consent decree was contained within the 2007 ROD, which had undergone NFMA and FLPMA amendment proceedings, with notice and comment and consideration of alternatives, the provisions of the consent decree should be approved as the result of the amendment process. Finally, they suggest that because the changes worked in the consent decree are a “lesser included” subset of the 2007 ROD’s proposed alternative of eliminating Survey and Manage altogether, it was permissible for the district court to approve them. While these arguments have some intuitive appeal, we must reject them. The district court concluded that the Agencies’ process as a whole had violated NEPA by, among other things, failing to include an alternative that truly “depict[ed] accurately the Agencies’ present course of action.” Conservation Nw., 674 F. Supp. 2d at 1244–47 (internal quotation marks omitted). Analysis of the “noaction alternative” is at the heart of the NEPA process; thus, failure to provide a valid one casts a shadow over the process as a whole. Id. at 1244. This failure not only rendered the process defective under NEPA, but also infected the public notice and comment prescribed by NFMA and FLPMA, because the public should have been afforded an opportunity to comment on all alternatives that the Agencies were required by law to consider. See Boody, 468 F.3d at 556 (views of public must be adequately incorporated into process). Appellees’ “lesser included” argument is similarly unconvincing. Under Boody, any substantial change to CONSERVATION NORTHWEST V . SHERMAN 15 Survey and Manage triggers procedural requirements, whether the change would reduce coverage to a “lesser included” version of the standard’s protections, as was the case in Boody, or scale back from a total repeal of Survey and Manage, as Appellees suggest is permissible here. 468 F.3d at 556–58; see also City of N.Y. v. Clinton, 985 F. Supp. 168, 178–79 (D.D.C. 1998), aff’d, 524 U.S. 417 (1998) (“[T]he laws that resulted . . . were different from those consented to . . . . There is no way of knowing whether those laws, in their truncated form, would have received the requisite support . . . .” ). Because the consent decree in this case allowed the Agencies effectively to promulgate a substantial and permanent amendment to Survey and Manage without having followed statutorily required procedures, it was improper.