Using public litigation records to identify priority science needs for managing public lands

Abstract

Relevant science is essential for effective natural resource decision making, including on public lands managed by the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) Bureau of Land Management (BLM), that cover 1/10th of the United States. Most of the BLM's management decisions require analyses under the National Environmental Policy Act, and the use of science in these decisions is often challenged. Using coproduction, we assembled an interagency team of scientists and resource managers to develop a method for using public litigation to identify priority science needs for the BLM. We searched publicly available case documents finalized from 2015-2019 in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico within federal courts and the DOI Office of Hearings and Appeals, and identified 108 case documents that involved challenges to the BLM's use of science. We retained 48 case documents that contained at least one challenge about the BLM's use of science for a specific resource. We categorized all challenges in each case document according to the proposed action, affected resource, type of science challenged (data about resources, science relevant to potential impacts, methods for analyzing potential impacts, and mitigation actions), and specific nature of the challenge (e.g., challenging direct effects analysis). We identified priority science needs based on the frequency of challenges, the number of states where similar challenges occurred, whether the BLM lost the challenge, and whether the case was remanded. Top needs related to oil and gas development actions and included science about effects on air quality and climate, water, and socioeconomics; data for air quality and climate; and methods for analyzing potential impacts to cultural resources and air quality and climate. The BLM can use this information to prioritize actions (e.g., funding new research or science syntheses) to strengthen its science foundation for decision-making.

Accuracy, accessibility, and institutional capacity shape the utility of habitat models for managing and conserving rare plants on western public lands

“…Our methodology has limitations. For our analysis of litigation records, our sample only included publicly available case documents (Foster et al, 2023), and the timeframe was restricted to documents completed between 2015 and 2019, several years prior to our semi‐structured interviews conducted in 2022. Similarly, our sample of EAs and EISs was restricted to Colorado and the same timeframe.…”

“…They then retained documents that involved the BLM and contained a challenge to the BLM's use of science information about a specific resource ( n = 48 case documents). Further detail on methods can be found in Foster et al (2023).…”

“…Here, we revisited the 48 case documents analyzed in Foster et al (2023) to assess potential challenges to the BLM's use of habitat models for rare plants. First, we separated out the challenges from that study that specifically alleged issues regarding data ( n = 26 case documents).…”

“…Legal challenges can provide insight into agency use of data products. In June 2021, we analyzed results from a prior study that assessed legal challenges to the BLM's use of data and science (Foster et al, 2023) to identify challenges to the BLM's use of habitat models for rare plants.…”

“…The prior study (Foster et al, 2023) used public litigation records to identify where BLM is commonly challenged on its use of science information (see Appendix S1 for definitions). The authors searched case documents finalized between 2015 and 2019 from federal courts and the DOI Office of Hearings and Appeals.…”