Lower Court Holding in Weyerhaeuser v. FWS
Decision of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
This case is about a frog — the Rana sevosa — commonly known as the dusky gopher frog. These frogs spend most of their lives underground in open-canopied pine forests. They migrate to isolated, ephemeral ponds to breed. Ephemeral ponds are only seasonally flooded, leaving them to dry out cyclically and making it impossible for predatory fish to survive. After the frogs are finished breeding, they return to their underground habitats, followed by their offspring. When the dusky gopher frog was listed as an endangered species, there were only about 100 adult frogs known to exist in the wild. Although,…
