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Full-Text Articles in Animal Law
Vecinos Para El Bienestar De La Comunidad Costera V. Ferc, Malcolm M. Gilbert
Vecinos Para El Bienestar De La Comunidad Costera V. Ferc, Malcolm M. Gilbert
Public Land & Resources Law Review
The D.C. Circuit Court remanded three Brownsville, TX LNG approval orders to FERC for failing to adequately explain conclusions around environmental justice and climate concerns. The Court ordered FERC to reevaluate whether the projects are in the public interest. The LNG terminals and pipeline will disproportionately impact low-income, minority communities, and substantial greenhouse gas emissions from production and export will contribute to anthropogenic climate change. This case note explores the role that environmental justice and climate change play in federal agency decision-making processes, analyzes the legal framework for the Court's decision, and discusses how the outcome of this litigation could …
Highway Culverts, Salmon Runs, And The Stevens Treaties: A Century Of Litigating Pacific Northwest Tribal Fishing Rights, Ryan Hickey
Public Land & Resources Law Review
Isaac Stevens, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs and Governor of Washington Territory, negotiated a series of treaties with Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest during 1854 and 1855. A century and a half later in 2001, the United States joined 21 Indian tribes in filing a Request for Determination in the United States District Court for the District of Washington. Plaintiffs alleged the State of Washington had violated those 150-year-old treaties, which remained in effect, by building and maintaining culverts under roads that prevented salmon passage. This litigation eventually reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in favor …
Collaboration Through Nepa: Achieving A Social License To Operate On Federal Public Lands, Temple Stoellinger, L. Steven Smutko, Jessica M. Western
Collaboration Through Nepa: Achieving A Social License To Operate On Federal Public Lands, Temple Stoellinger, L. Steven Smutko, Jessica M. Western
Public Land & Resources Law Review
As demand and consumption of natural gas increases, so will drilling operations to extract the natural gas on federal public lands. Fueled by the shale gas revolution, natural gas drilling operations are now frequently taking place, not only in the highly documented urban settings, but also on federal public lands with high conservation value. The phenomenon of increased drilling in sensitive locations, both urban and remote, has sparked increased public opposition, requiring oil and gas producers to reconsider how they engage the public. Oil and gas producers have increasingly deployed the concept of a social license to operate to gain …
Public-Private Conservation Agreements And The Greater Sage-Grouse, Justin R. Pidot
Public-Private Conservation Agreements And The Greater Sage-Grouse, Justin R. Pidot
Public Land & Resources Law Review
In 2015, the Obama Administration announced its conservation plans for the greater sage-grouse, an iconic bird of the intermountain west.Political leadership at the time described those plans as the “largest landscape-level conservation effort in U.S. history,”and they served as the foundation for a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) that a listing of the bird was not warranted under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The Trump Administration appears poised to substantially amend the plans, although an array of interested parties have urged that the plans be left intact. Regardless of the outcome of this debate, conservation of …
Streamlining The Production Of Clean Energy: Proposals To Reform The Hydroelectricity Licensing Process, Travis Kavulla, Laura Farkas
Streamlining The Production Of Clean Energy: Proposals To Reform The Hydroelectricity Licensing Process, Travis Kavulla, Laura Farkas
Public Land & Resources Law Review
Hydroelectric power is an efficient and clean source of power. In an era when air emissions dominate public concern about the environmental effects of the energy sector, it is a paradox that among the most highly regulated energy projects are hydroelectric dams, which do not combust fuel. This is partly due to a failure of successive statutory enactments,which have transformed hydroelectric licensing from a regulatory “one-stop shop” with a single regulator, to a process chained to a bewilderingnumber of often conflicting regulatory agencies, often riven with delay. Hydroelectric licensing has also failed because its capacious standard of review encourages special-interest …
Center For Biological Diversity V. Zinke, Ryan Hickey
Center For Biological Diversity V. Zinke, Ryan Hickey
Public Land & Resources Law Review
The oft-cited “arbitrary and capricious” standard revived the Center for Biological Diversity’s most recent legal challenge in its decades-long quest to see arctic grayling listed under the Endangered Species Act. While this Ninth Circuit decision did not grant grayling ESA protections, it did require the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its 2014 finding that listing grayling as threatened or endangered was unwarranted. In doing so, the court found “range,” as used in the ESA, vague while endorsing the FWS’s 2014 clarification of that term. Finally, this holding identified specific shortcomings of the challenged FWS finding, highlighting how …
Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility V. United States Epa, F. Aaron Rains
Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility V. United States Epa, F. Aaron Rains
Public Land & Resources Law Review
Prior to 2016, the EPA acknowledged that human activities significantly contribute to climate change. However, on March 9, 2017, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that significant debate regarding the issue remained in the scientific community. In response to these statements, a nonprofit organization filed a FOIA request with the EPA seeking any documents or records Pruitt may have used when formulating his statements or substantiating his position. The EPA refused to comply with the request, citing undue burden and improper interrogation and this action followed. Upon review, the District Court for the District of Columbia found the plaintiff’s FOIA request …