WildEarth Guardians v. Burgum

• WildEarth Guardians filed an Endangered Species Act lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Columbia challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s December 2022 decision not to list three plant species found only in the area surrounding Arches National Park in southeastern Utah. The complaint referred to the three species—Cisco milkvetch, stage station milkvetch, and Isely’s milkvetch—as the “Moab-3” and alleged that the “predominant threat” they face is climate change. The complaint alleged the “rugged terrain” the Moab-3 inhabit “is expected to endure particularly brutal changes in its climate, with a scientific consensus that climate change will drive more frequent and more extreme drought, further parching the region in the years to come.” The complaint alleged that FWS’s decision “ignored and obfuscated climate change impacts as well as other threats to these rare, endemic plants and their ecosystem, rendering this decision arbitrary, capricious, contrary to the best scientific and commercial data available, and otherwise not in accordance with” the Endangered Species Act.

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