Opinion ID: 779237
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Merits of NFMA claim

Text: 53 We affirm the district court with respect to Bear Creek's NFMA claims. First, with respect to timing: Plaintiffs point only to the Kempff memorandum of August 1998, discussed supra at pages 892-93, to argue that the Forest Service decided to amend the road density standard before assessing the significance of such an amendment under NFMA. As discussed above in the context of NEPA review, however, the Kempff memorandum does not show that the Forest Service decided upon any particular course of action with respect to the Darroch-Eagle sale. Instead, the record shows that the Forest Service made its final decision on the Darroch-Eagle amendment only after conducting its EA and issuing a Decision Notice, in which it concluded that the amendment was not significant under NFMA. It therefore followed NFMA's timing requirements. 54 Second, we cannot say that the Forest Service acted arbitrarily in analyzing the Darroch-Eagle road density amendment separately from other Gallatin II Timber Sale Program amendments when assessing its significance under 16 U.S.C. § 1604(f)(4). NFMA does not require a cumulative assessment of the significance of all Gallatin II proposed amendments, many of which have not yet been adopted, as far as the record shows. The statute provides that forest plans shall be amended in any manner whatsoever, and regulations leave to the discretion of the Forest Service the question of whether any given amendment is significant. See 36 C.F.R. 219.10(f) (1996). These amendments apply to different timber sales throughout the forest, and plaintiffs do not assert that the timber sales themselves are so related as to be, in truth, one sale. Separate analysis of the amendments, then, seems reasonable. 55 We also find reasonable the Forest Service's conclusion that the Darroch-Eagle amendment was not a significant change to the overall Gallatin National Forest Plan. The Forest Service concluded in the Decision Notice that the amendment does not alter multiple-use goals or objectives for long-term land and resource management, nor significantly change the planned annual outputs for the forest. Given the agency's particular expertise in interpreting its own Forest Plan, we cannot say that this decision was arbitrary and capricious.