## Facts

- Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game announced a predator-control plan to kill about 170 wolves (roughly 60% of the local population) across a large area of interior Alaska, including substantial federal lands.
- The state intended to kill wolves from aircraft to increase moose numbers by reducing predation.
- Environmental and animal-protection organizations and individuals alleged the program would cause severe ecological harm and disrupt predator-prey dynamics.
- Plaintiffs requested that the U.S. Department of the Interior prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before allowing the program to proceed on federal lands.
- The Secretary of the Interior declined to stop the state program and did not prepare an EIS.
- Plaintiffs relied chiefly on the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), arguing it authorized and effectively required the Secretary to consider superseding state wildlife management on federal lands to protect environmental values.
- The district court issued a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction directing federal defendants to take steps to halt the wolf kill on federal lands until NEPA compliance occurred.

## Issues

1. Whether the Secretary of the Interior’s decision not to exercise discretionary authority to stop Alaska’s wolf-kill program on federal lands is a “major Federal action” under NEPA requiring an EIS.
2. Whether FLPMA requires the Secretary to intervene in, or at least conduct environmental review concerning, state wildlife-management activity on federal lands when significant ecological impacts are alleged.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit reversed the preliminary injunction.
- The court held that the Secretary’s nonintervention did not constitute a “major Federal action” triggering NEPA’s EIS requirement.
- The court rejected the view that FLPMA made federal intervention mandatory in these circumstances, treating the Secretary’s supersession authority as discretionary.

## Legal Principles

- NEPA’s EIS duty applies to “major Federal action”; a federal agency’s refusal to interfere with a state program, without more, is not itself a major federal action.
- A state-designed and state-executed wildlife program does not become federal action merely because it occurs on federal lands and a federal official possesses discretionary power to override it.
- FLPMA may authorize the Secretary to supersede state wildlife management on federal lands after consultation, but the statute does not compel intervention whenever environmental harm is alleged.
- Courts are reluctant to treat agency nonaction as reviewable “action” under NEPA absent a clear statutory command making the agency’s involvement obligatory.

## Conclusion

Because the wolf-control program was a state initiative and the Secretary’s choice not to block it was not a major federal action, NEPA did not require an EIS, and the preliminary injunction ordering federal officials to stop the program on federal lands could not stand.


Defenders of Wildlife v. Andrus, 627 F.2d 1238 (D.C. Cir. 1980)