## Facts

- In 1920, Congress established the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve within the Black Hills National Forest under the Norbeck Organic Act (Norbeck Act).
- The Norbeck Act is specific to the Preserve and set it aside “for the protection of game animals and birds” and as a breeding place for them.
- The United States Forest Service (Forest Service) is responsible for developing and administering management plans affecting the Preserve.
- In 1927, the Forest Service issued a master plan stating that wildlife management was the Preserve’s primary purpose and that timber cutting must not materially interfere with game animals.
- In 1976, Congress enacted the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), which applies generally across the National Forest System and requires planning that provides for diversity of plant and animal communities.
- In 1983, the Forest Service adopted the Black Hills National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan (1983 Plan) under NFMA. The Forest Service read NFMA planning goals as broadening management choices within the Preserve beyond the Norbeck Act’s game-and-bird focus.
- Under the 1983 Plan, the Forest Service developed a timber-harvest plan and approved two commercial timber sales within the Preserve that would remove timber from thousands of acres and require construction of more than 30 miles of roads.
- The Forest Service recognized that the timber sales would significantly disturb game and bird species and would have harmful effects on sensitive game and bird species, but justified the harvest as beneficial to overall plant and animal diversity in the Preserve.
- Sierra Club challenged the approvals in federal court, alleging the timber sales were inconsistent with the Norbeck Act because the Forest Service treated the Preserve’s game-and-bird protection mandate as secondary to NFMA-based planning goals.
- The district court dismissed the challenge, and Sierra Club appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether the Forest Service’s approval of two commercial timber sales and associated road construction within the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve was consistent with the Norbeck Act’s directive to manage the Preserve for the protection and breeding of game animals and birds.
2. Whether NFMA’s general planning requirement to provide for plant and animal diversity allowed the Forest Service to treat the Norbeck Act’s Preserve-specific mandate as supplemental or subordinate in managing the Preserve.
3. Whether the Forest Service’s interpretation of the Norbeck Act in light of NFMA was entitled to judicial deference.

## Decision

- The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal in relevant part and remanded.
- The court held that the Norbeck Act sets a Preserve-specific management direction—protection of game animals and birds and recognition of the area as a breeding place—and that this direction governs Forest Service decisionmaking within the Preserve.
- The court rejected the Forest Service’s approach that treated the Norbeck Act’s game-and-bird mandate as merely an added consideration that could yield to broader NFMA planning goals focused on overall diversity.
- The court declined to defer to the agency’s interpretation because it conflicted with the Preserve-specific statute’s text and purpose as applied to the challenged timber-sale approvals.
- Because the timber-sale approvals were justified on an “overall diversity” rationale despite acknowledged significant disturbance to game and bird species, the approvals could not stand to the extent they conflicted with the Norbeck Act’s controlling mandate.

## Legal Principles

- When a land unit is governed by a Preserve-specific statute with a clear management purpose, that statute controls decisions within the unit over more general forest-management statutes and plans.
- NFMA’s general diversity and planning requirements do not displace a site-specific congressional direction for a particular preserve; general planning goals must operate within the limits set by the more specific statute.
- Courts do not defer to an agency interpretation that conflicts with clear statutory direction and the evident purpose of the statute governing the unit at issue.
- Forest Service approvals for timber harvest and related development in a congressionally designated wildlife preserve must be justified as consistent with the preserve’s governing wildlife-protection purpose, not solely by reference to broader forest-wide goals.

## Conclusion

Sierra Club v. United States Forest Service held that the Norbeck Act’s Preserve-specific directive to manage the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve for the protection and breeding of game animals and birds governs Forest Service management there, and the agency could not rely on NFMA’s general diversity-based planning goals to justify timber sales and road construction that materially conflicted with that controlling mandate.


Sierra Club v. United States Forest Service, 259 F.3d 1281 (2001)