D.C. Circuit Rejects Psychological Harm Theory In Deer-Culling Case

This Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit issued an opinion in No. 13-5136, Grunewald v. Jarvis, affirming the lower court's decision that the National Park Service's promulgation of the White-Tailed Deer Management Plan was lawful. At issue in that case was whether the service's adoption of a plan for culling the population of white-tailed deer in Rock Creek National Park violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by failing to comply with certain federal statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Much of the court of appeals' decision affirming the district court's summary judgment in favor of defendants (see 930 F. Supp. 2d 73 [D.D.C. 2013]) is a relatively vanilla application of the APA. But the final prong of the court's NEPA analysis is noteworthy in that it explicitly excludes psychological harms from the scope of impacts that fall within NEPA's ambit.