Center for Biological Diversity v. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
Annotate this CaseCalifornia's Department of Fish and Wildlife chose to use a program environmental impact report (EIR) to analyze enterprises' impacts on a statewide basis. Instead of addressing impacts on specific locations the Department stocked, the EIR addressed the enterprise's continuing and potential impacts on individual species that could be located at many locations. The EIR formulated, and the Department adopted, protocols and plans for discovering site-specific impacts at each of the nearly 1,000 water bodies the Department stocks and the 24 hatcheries it oversaw, and it committed to mitigating the impacts discovered from those reviews. These appeals presented for the Court of Appeals' review questions of whether the EIR complied with the California Environmental Quality Act. Furthermore the Court also addressed whether the Department's imposition of these mitigation measures on private fish vendors violated the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA). In case Nos. C072486 and C073011, plaintiffs, Center for Biological Diversity and Californians for Alternatives to Toxics et al., respectively, argued the EIR was flawed because it: (1) did not perform site-specific review for each site in the state the Department stocks with fish; (2) deferred forming mitigation measures to the future formulation of protocols and management plans; (3) relied on the current stocking enterprise as the environmental baseline; and (4) did not review a reasonable range of alternatives, including a no project alternative consisting of ceasing all hatchery and stocking operations. The Court of Appeal disagreed with plaintiffs: given the history, nature, and scope of the project under review, the Department did not abuse its discretion in the manner it organized the EIR, analyzed the project, and mitigated its numerous impacts. In case No. C072790, plaintiff California Association for Recreational Fishing contended the Department violated the APA by imposing the qualification requirements and the monitoring and reporting obligations on private fish vendors without complying with the APA's notice and hearing procedures. The Court of Appeal concluded each measure qualified as a regulation under the APA that the Department did not properly adopt as such. The Court therefore reversed the trial court's judgment in that appeal.
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