A federal appeals court has ruled that a USDA wildlife management program in Nevada violated environmental review requirements, while also upholding the agency’s authority to conduct predator control on behalf of livestock operations.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals partially sided with environmental groups WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project, finding that USDA’s Wildlife Services failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it authorized a 2020 predator damage management plan without adequately evaluating its environmental impact. The court said the agency did not conduct the required “hard look” at potential harms and ordered a new or revised environmental analysis.
However, the court rejected the groups’ argument that predator control to protect grazing operations constitutes a commercial enterprise barred by the Wilderness Act. Citing legal precedent, the panel ruled such lethal control is permissible in Wilderness Areas when tied to long-standing livestock use.
Writing for the court, Judge Morgan B. Christen found that the agency’s 2020 Environmental Assessment (EA) authorizing predator damage management (PDM) activities on public lands in Nevada was “deficient in several ways,” notably due to inconsistent descriptions of where the program would take place.
“Ambiguity concerning the inclusion or exclusion of just one of the federal land designations at issue—Areas of Critical Environmental Concern—changes the geographic scope of the PDM program by over 1.4 million acres,” Christen wrote. “This inconsistent description left the public to guess where Wildlife Services will operate its PDM program in Nevada and thus hindered the public’s ability to comment on the agency’s proposed actions.”
While the court upheld Wildlife Services’ authority to carry out lethal predator control under the Wilderness Act when done in support of existing livestock grazing, it vacated the district court’s prior ruling on the NEPA claim. The case was remanded with instructions for the agency to reconsider whether a complete Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is necessary and to either produce a revised EA or a more comprehensive EIS.
“We vacate the operative EA and FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact) and remand to the district court to enter an order directing the agency to determine whether to prepare a new EA or an EIS,” Christen wrote. “Pursuant to the parties’ 2016 settlement agreement, the agency may continue PDM in other areas in the state relying on older NEPA analyses while the new NEPA analysis is conducted.”
Background
In 2012, WildEarth Guardians sued USDA’s Wildlife Services, arguing the agency was unlawfully relying on a 1994 environmental review to justify its PDM program in Nevada. The parties settled in 2016, with Wildlife Services agreeing to halt all PDM activities in federally protected Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas until a new environmental analysis was completed. The agency continued its predator control work in the rest of the state and, in 2019, released a draft EA outlining five options for future management—including a preferred plan, Alternative 2—that would resume limited lethal control in protected areas under specific conditions.
Alternative 2 proposed tighter restrictions in Wilderness Areas, targeting only individual predators on foot or horseback, and banning aerial and chemical methods, while allowing broader and more intensive practices in Wilderness Study Areas. Wildlife Services finalized the EA and issued a FONSI in 2020, concluding that a full EIS was unnecessary. However, public comments raised concerns about vague geographic boundaries, inadequate analysis of local and ecological impacts, risks to public health and outdated or selective science on the effectiveness of lethal control. The environmental groups asserted that the final EA dismissed many of these concerns, often without fully addressing the newer scientific studies or providing a clear explanation for excluding them.
In December 2021, the environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging Wildlife Services’ predator damage management program in Nevada.
Both sides filed motions for summary judgment, and the district court ruled in favor of Wildlife Services. The court cited 9th Circuit precedent allowing predator control in Wilderness Areas to support pre-existing grazing operations and found the agency’s statewide EA reasonable. It also upheld the agency’s decision not to prepare an EIS, concluding that Wildlife Services had sufficiently addressed concerns over public health risks, impacts to protected areas and the scientific debate surrounding lethal predator control. — Charles Wallace, WLJ contributing editor
