Opinion ID: 4530963
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Consistency with Standard 5

Text: For similar reasons, ONDA’s substantive argument that the MNF’s grazing authorizations are arbitrary and capricious because they violate Standard 5 also fails. Standard 5 requires that the Forest Service “[p]rovide the necessary habitat to maintain or increase populations of management indicator species: bull trout, cutthroat trout, and rainbow/redband trout.” As discussed above, the record amply demonstrates that the Forest Service is actively engaged in protecting bull trout habitats from the effects of livestock grazing by monitoring the effects of grazing on various habitat indicators and implementing site-specific grazing limitations. We also note that Standard 5 is a broad planning standard, one of fifty other standards that apply to this area, and thus it is challenging to enforce. Caselaw counsels against enforcing open-ended standards in fact-specific contexts. Cf. SUWA, 542 U.S. at 71 (“[A]llowing general enforcement of plan terms would lead to pervasive interference with BLM’s own ordering of priorities.”); Gardner v. U.S. Bureau of Land Mgmt., 638 F.3d 1217, 1222 (9th Cir. 2011) (“[A]lthough the [Federal Land and Policy Management Act] mandates that the BLM preserve wilderness and manage public lands in accordance with land use plans, its mandates are not tantamount to a ‘specific statutory command requiring’ agency action.” (quoting SUWA, 542 U.S. at 71)). ONDA V. USFS 23 In any case, we certainly cannot effectively mandate, as ONDA would have us do, that bull trout numbers increase, given the indirect language of Standard 5 and the causal complexity underlying the bull trout’s population decline. The Forest Service’s ongoing site-specific monitoring, analysis, and enforcement activities aimed at protecting and improving bull trout habitats, described above, were reasonable means of ensuring consistency with Standard 5. See Forest Guardians, 329 F.3d at 1098–99. We hold that the Forest Service did not act arbitrarily or capriciously with respect to Standard 5 in issuing any of the challenged grazing authorizations.