ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration improperly denied federal wildlife protections to Pacific walruses, animals reliant on dwindling Arctic sea ice.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Obama administration concluded in 2011 that designation of “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act was warranted for walruses, and the marine mammal was put in line for formal listing.
But the agency reversed itself in 2017 under then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, determining that a listing and protections that come with it were not called for.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, siding with the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity in a lawsuit challenging the Zinke decision, ruled on Thursday that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to properly explain its walrus reversal.
“The essential flaw in the 2017 decision is its failure to offer more than a cursory explanation of why the findings underlying its 2011 decision no longer apply,” a three-judge panel wrote in its 20-page opinion.
If the agency’s “new policy rests upon factual findings that contradict those which underlay its prior policy,” a sufficiently detailed justification for changing its position is required, the court said.
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage, Alaska; Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter Cooney)
