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ESA Case Update- Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv., 139 S. Ct. 361 (2018)
December 19th, 2018 — by Cathy Janasie — Category: Endangered Species

The U.S. Supreme Court recently vacated and remanded a case involving the critical habitat designation of the dusky gopher frog, a mid-size frog about three inches long that can be black, brown, or gray in color, giving the frog its “dusky” name. The frog gets its “gopher” name because it spends the majority of its time underground in burrows or stump holes in open canopy forests. One of the frog’s most recognizable and endearing traits is that it uses its front legs to cover its eyes when it feels threatened.

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On Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a proposed rule defining “waters of the United States” (WOTUS). The phrase determines the scope of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Congress enacted the CWA without defining WOTUS, and its meaning has been debated and litigated extensively.

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On November 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a months-old ban on the importation of Mexican shrimp and other seafood caught using gillnets. The import ban was promulgated in response to gillnets’ impact on the critically endangered vaquita porpoise—of which there are only fifteen members remaining in the wild. The species is killed at a rate of about fifty percent annually due to their accidental entanglement in gillnets used in the Upper Gulf of California, Mexico. This ruling marks the most recent in a line of failed legal challenges several U.S. governmental agencies have made in a hope to have the ban struck down.

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