Montana Decision Reaffirms That Federal Environmental Laws Require Specific, Record Based Analyses

A December 11 Montana federal court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. US Forest Service vacated approvals for a condition‑based forest‑treatment project near Yellowstone National Park because the administrative record did not contain the specific analyses needed under NEPA, the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). While the court recognized that condition‑based management can be lawful, it held that NEPA’s hard‑look requirement is not satisfied when an agency defers the spatial details that drive environmental effects, that NFMA requires demonstrated compliance with forest plan standards at the time of decision, and that ESA analyses must use the best available science and account for how temporary road placement affects secure habitat. The court vacated the agencies’ decisions on those items and remanded for further analysis.

Center for Biological Diversity serves as a reminder that sophisticated parties navigating condition-based programs — whether in forest management, infrastructure, or energy — should fortify business plans by ensuring that the administrative record includes robust analyses tied to statutory requirements. In this case, the relevant laws required analyses related to spatial configuration, temporal staging, and scientifically grounded metrics. The case also suggests that, under certain circumstances, the failure to address these requirements initially may not be mitigated with generalized commitments to remedy process defects and ensure compliance in the future.

Below are three additional takeaways from the Montana decision for the regulated community.

First, even though judicial and executive actions may soon streamline NEPA analyses (see here and here), NEPA remains on the books and in effect. Accordingly, careful attention to the agency record, including ensuring the correct, present tense analyses are included, can help in the event of any challenge. This said, the court rejected a broader NEPA challenge to the involved policies and accepted the agency’s climate analysis for now, although suggesting that the agency should reassess whether additional analyses should be conducted in parallel with other decisions. Last term’s US Supreme Court decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County narrows the scope of analyses to include only impacts which are clearly within an agency’s expertise. Center for Biological Diversity appears to be one of the first NEPA decisions since Seven County to find for challengers of agency actions.

Second, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) directs reviewing courts to ensure that agencies examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its actions. While Seven County confers agencies with considerably more deference in their implementation of NEPA, agencies must still fulfill their substantive obligations under their implementing statutes. Vague decisions cannot withstand challenges where relevant statutes require specificity. Here, NFMA and ESA directed relevant analyses be conducted with specificity, and the court held that small changes in plans tentatively proffered in the future could result in non-compliance with the involved laws. Accordingly, the agencies’ plans were insufficient.

Third, agency decisions are subject to vacatur when courts identify deficiencies in underlying analyses. While the agencies might offer better reasoning on remand, the court determined that the errors undermined the viability of the provided framework because it deferred details fundamental to statutory compliance. Accordingly, the court held that the deficiencies were neither minor nor readily severable from the decision’s core, and therefore required further analysis on remand by the agencies.

Procedural Background

The case stems from APA challenges brought by a group of non-governmental organizations against federal approvals of plans permitting logging of 16,500 acres of pine forest and the construction of associated temporary roads near Yellowstone National Park under NEPA, NFMA, and the ESA. The challenged documents included the US Forest Service’s Environmental Assessment and Decision Notice for the South Plateau Landscape Area Treatment Project and aspects of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) consultation, because the plaintiffs asserted that both agencies’ decisions inadequately addressed the project’s effects on two protected species — grizzly bears and Canada lynx — and deferred analyses required at the time of decision.

The animals were central to the NFMA analyses. Grizzly bear survival is closely tied to a “secure habitat” that is defined in the record by distance from roads, making the precise placement of roads (not just mileage, which the Forest Service evaluated) relevant to the required analyses. Similarly, the record failed to document how future road placement would affect the minimum “patch size” necessary for grizzly bears, which was relevant to FWS’ ESA analyses. Lynx were also key under NFMA because the project had to show present-tense compliance with policy limits applicable to designated lynx habitat.

The agencies’ condition-based, multi-year forest treatment plans identified preliminary treatment areas and outlined future verification checklists before logging was implemented but did not commit to specific locations for logging. The court held that this approach failed to provide specificity sufficient to enable a lawful NEPA “hard look,” to demonstrate contemporaneous NFMA compliance with forest plan standards, and to support ESA conclusions premised on secure habitat metrics sensitive to road placement given that both statutes require specificity. Because the decisions lacked the required specificity, the court vacated and remanded them for further treatment by the involved agencies.

Under the APA, which provides the applicable standard of review, agency action must be set aside if arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise contrary to law, a standard that turns on whether the agency considered relevant factors, addressed important aspects, and offered a rational, record-grounded explanation. NEPA, in turn, requires a “procedural cross-check,” as opposed to operating as a substantive veto of agency action. In the court’s view, the NEPA cross-check must occur before an agency enables or commits to a project and must be sufficiently specific to inform decision making and public participation. That framing propelled key holdings: the Forest Service’s failure to analyze worst-case scenarios left “important aspects” unaddressed. The agencies’ ESA analysis likewise faltered by treating secure habitat as if indifferent to road placement while acknowledging that placement drives effects on endangered species.

NFMA analysis turned on the distinction between binding standards and post hoc assurances. In the court’s view, NFMA required documented present tense compliance with statutory standards. The agency’s analysis failed here because it structured compliance around future design-feature verification and resource checklists; the agency effectively authorized now and verified later — an approach the Ninth Circuit has previously rejected. Further, under NFMA’s wording, the Forest Service was not permitted to segment the one project it approved into yearly activities that would better withstand APA review. Similar issues with FWS’ ESA-related decisions (e.g., failing to tie identified forest plot size to grizzly bear needs) rendered its decisions under the ESA likewise arbitrary and capricious.

Because of the foundational defects the court identified, vacatur and remand was required. While agencies may offer better reasoning on remand, the court concluded that errors in the current decisions undermined the viability of the framework included in them because it deferred details fundamental to statutory compliance.

Members of the firm’s Environmental, Energy & Cleantech, and Agriculture & AgTech groups regularly monitor state and federal regulatory reform efforts.