In a major victory for the communities and wildlife that depend on North Carolina’s Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act by relying on a faulty analysis during the creation of the controversial Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan. The court’s decision effectively prohibits the Forest Service from relying on the Plan.
The ruling comes after the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, MountainTrue, Sierra Club, and the Center for Biological Diversity, sued the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service in April 2024. The lawsuit challenged the revised Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan, which was finalized in 2023 and guides the long-term future of two of the nation’s most popular public lands.
The Plan proposed a massive increase in logging in the forests and put sensitive areas, including habitat for endangered forest bats, on the chopping block. But the federal agencies failed to show that these rare and federally protected bats — the northern long-eared bat, Indiana bat, Virginia big-eared bat, and gray bat — could withstand harmful logging. Instead, the agencies relied on incomplete and inaccurate information to downplay the risks posed by the new Plan, in some cases flatly ignoring where the bats’ habitat occurs.
The Court ruled the agencies’ analysis — called a Biological Opinion — was clearly flawed, writing in its decision that the agencies’ conclusions were “unexplained,” “unsupported,” “deficient,” and “of almost no value.” The Court also found that since the Biological Opinion is unlawful, that “void[s] [the] authority for the Revised Forest Plan” itself.
"This ruling reveals what we knew when the faulty plan was released; that increased logging targets and other assumptions were unjustified by any reasonable planning process that actually followed the law," said David Reid, National Forests Issue Chair with the N.C. Sierra Club. "It’s a win for all who cherish these threatened bats, and hope that our grandchildren will continue to marvel at them."
Read the full news release at SELC's website.