Ninth Circuit sides with Forest Service in challenge to Idaho logging project

The ruling is separate from a July decision by the same panel that found that the Alliance for the Wild Rockies can pursue its claim that the project is subject to environmental review.(CN) — The Ninth Circuit on Friday sided with the U.S. Forest Service on one of the claims in the long running litigation over a logging project in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest.In a unanimous opinion, the appellate panel reversed an Idaho magistrate judge’s summary judgment in favor of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies last year. The group argued the project would result in more roads than allowed in and around the Priest Bears Outside Recovery Zone near Priest River.The three-judge panel agreed with the Forest Service that the Hanna Flats Good Neighbor Authority Project, first approved in 2018, actually reduces total road mileage in the recovery zone. The panel said the excess mileage above a 2011 baseline was not caused by the project, but by an undercount of existing roads when the baseline was established.“The district court considered only the number of noncompliant miles in the Priest BORZ without reference to the causal relationship between those noncompliant miles and the project,” U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson wrote. “This was error.”The 22.4-mile gap between the post-project total and the 2011 baseline is fully accounted for by 23.6 miles of roads the Forest Service found existed in 2010 but were not counted in the baseline, the Donald Trump appointee added.The panel, which also included U.S. Circuit Judges Danielle Forrest, a Trump appointee, and Jennifer Sung, a Joe Biden appointee, sent the case back to Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Raymond Patricco in Boise for further proceedings.The lawsuit has proceeded on two tracks. Friday’s ruling addresses the claim that the project violates road limits in the bears outside recovery zone, an area adjacent to primary grizzly bear habitat where bears are known to roam. The Alliance is separately pursuing a claim that the project requires an environmental assessment.In July, the same Ninth Circuit panel, but with Nelson in dissent, overturned another federal judge in Idaho and agreed with the Alliance that the organization hadn’t exhausted its claim that the project requires environmental review.The legal challenge to the project, which permits extensive commercial logging, prescribed burning, temporary road construction and maintenance and excavated skid trails near a recovery zone for the protected Selkirk grizzly bear, has bounced between the district court and Ninth Circuit for years.In 2021, Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald E. Bush found the Forest Service violated the Healthy Forests Restoration Act by excluding the project from an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act and blocked it from proceeding. The federal government appealed twice, and a Ninth Circuit panel reversed in 2023.On remand, the lower court ruled for the Forest Service, finding the environmental group’s claims barred under the administrative waiver doctrine. Also known as issue exhaustion, the doctrine prevents parties from challenging federal agency actions in court if they did not first raise those objections during administrative proceedings.The Alliance for Wild Rockies appealed and the majority of a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit sided with the environmental group last July.“In this case, the governing statute and regulations do not impose issue exhaustion,” Forrest said at the time.The Justice Department and the Alliance squared off last June over whether the project violates the 2011 Forest Plan Amendments for Motorized Access Management.“The sole issue in this appeal is simple," Jacob Ecker, an attorney representing the government, told the Ninth Circuit panel at a hearing in Seattle. “Does the Hannah Flats project violate a forest plan standard that prohibits increases in road miles when the project reduces road miles? In other words, can a project be unlawful when it doesn’t cause or contribute to the alleged violation? The answer is no, and the district court erred in concluding otherwise.”Representatives of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads