Center for Biological Diversity v. DOI

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 21, 2024 Decided July 15, 2025

No. 23-5308

CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY , ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:22-cv-01716)

Kyle J. Tisdel argued the cause for appellants. With him

on the briefs were Jason C. Rylander and Samantha

Ruscavage-Barz.

Daniel Halainen, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

argued the cause for federal appellees. With him on the brief

were Todd Kim, Assistant Attorney General, and Michael T.

Gray, Attorney.

Sean Marotta argued the cause for intervenors-appellees.

With him on the joint brief were Travis Jordan, Senior

Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for

the State of Wyoming, Catherine E. Stetson, Dana A. Raphael,

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Steven J. Rosenbaum, Bradley K. Ervin, Bret A. Sumner,

Malinda Morain, Eric Waeckerlin, Affie Ellis, Sarah C.

Bordelon, Hadassah M. Reimer, Kristina (Tina) R. Van

Bockern, Nikesh Jindal, Daniel S. Volchok, Andrew C. Lillie,

Mark D. Gibson, Kathleen C. Schroder, Mark Champoux,

Andrew C. Emrich, Thomas L. Sansonetti, and Bryson C.

Smith. Joseph Meyer, D. David DeWald, Attorney, Office of

the Attorney General for the State of Wyoming, Robert J.

Lundman, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, and Ryan A.

Smith, entered appearances.

Before: PILLARD, WILKINS and RAO , Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD.

PILLARD , Circuit Judge: From January 2021 to August

2022, the Bureau of Land Management approved more than

4,000 permits for oil and gas wells on public land in the

Permian Basin of southeast New Mexico and the Powder River

Basin of northeast Wyoming. Plaintiff environmental

organizations have challenged all those permit approvals,

alleging that BLM failed to adequately consider the climate and

environmental justice impact of the disputed wells. The district

court held that plaintiffs lacked standing and dismissed the

claims.

On appeal, the plaintiff organizations assert standing based

on affidavits recounting that their members live, work, and

recreate in the general vicinity of the permitted drilling sites

and consequently suffer a variety of injuries to their health,

safety, and recreational and aesthetic interests. But Plaintiffs

have failed to sufficiently link those harms to the discrete

agency actions they seek to reverse. Rather than explain how

one or more of the challenged permits would likely injure them,

as Article III requires, Plaintiffs have instead pursued an all-or-

3

nothing theory that claims standing to challenge all the permits

in the aggregate—whether for wells within a couple of miles

from where they live, work, or play, or for those more than 50

miles away. They alternatively claim standing based on

calculations of the wells’ overall contribution to global climate

change, and on an asserted organizational injury resulting from

the government’s failure to publicize information about climate

change. Those theories, too, are barred by our precedent. We

therefore affirm the district court’s judgment of dismissal.

I.

A.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM or the Bureau),

an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, is

authorized by the Mineral Leasing Act, 30 U.S.C. § 181 et seq.,

to issue leases granting private parties the right to extract oil,

gas, and other natural resources from public lands, id. § 181.

The Bureau opens public lands to such private use through a

three-stage process—land-use planning, leasing, and drill

permitting—outlined by the Mineral Leasing Act, the Federal

Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), 43 U.S.C. § 1701

et seq., and various federal regulations.

Under that process, BLM first prepares a Resource

Management Plan setting a general strategy and objectives for

a particular area of public land. Id. § 1712; 43 C.F.R. § 1601.0-

5(n).1 That Plan identifies which portions of the land will be

open to private leasing for oil and gas development. 43 U.S.C.

§ 1712(a). Second, BLM leases eligible individual parcels of

land through a competitive auction. 43 C.F.R §§ 3120.5-1, 5-

1

Some of the applicable regulations were revised during the course

of this litigation. We generally cite the version of the regulations in

effect at the time of the challenged action.

4

3 (2022); 30 U.S.C. § 226(b)(1)(A). Third, before a successful

lessee commences drilling, it must submit to BLM for its

approval an Application for Permit to Drill (APD or permit) a

proposed oil or gas well. 30 U.S.C. § 226(g); 43 C.F.R. §

3162.3-1 (2022). Throughout those stages, BLM must comply

with federal environmental statutes including, as relevant here,

the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. §

4321 et seq., the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 16 U.S.C. §

1531 et seq, and the FLPMA.

NEPA requires federal agencies “to consider and report on

the environmental effect of their proposed actions.” WildEarth

Guardians v. Jewell (WildEarth 2013), 738 F.3d 298, 302

(D.C. Cir. 2013). Specifically, an agency must prepare an

environmental impact statement (EIS) for all “major Federal

actions significantly affecting the quality of the human

environment.” 42 U.S.C. § 4332(C). By regulation, all

approvals of Resource Management Plans are considered

“major Federal actions” and must be accompanied by an EIS.

43 C.F.R. § 1601.0-6. However, not every federal action

requires an EIS; an action that is “not likely to have significant

effects” can instead be examined by a less in-depth

“environmental assessment.” 40 C.F.R. § 1501.3(a)(2) (2022).

The Bureau conducted only environmental assessments of the

individual APDs challenged in this case rather than separate

EISs for each one, although these environmental assessments

incorporate analysis from earlier EISs more broadly analyzing

effects of oil and gas development in New Mexico and

Wyoming. See, e.g., Environmental Assessment: Titan

Exploration LLC Nine Mile T41R74S22SWSE Oil and Gas

Well Pad, at 2 (J.A. 751).

Section 7 of the ESA obliges federal agencies to ensure

“that any action . . . is not likely to jeopardize the continued

existence of any endangered species or threatened species or

5

result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat of

such species.” 16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)(2). If an agency

determines that a proposed action “may affect listed species or

critical habitat,” 50 C.F.R. § 402.14(a) (2022), it must engage

in “consultation” with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and

National Marine Fisheries Service (the Services). Id.; Growth

Energy v. EPA., 5 F.4th 1, 26 (D.C. Cir. 2021) (per curiam).

Pursuant to that consultation, the relevant Service develops a

“biological opinion” that assesses “whether the action is likely

to jeopardize the continued existence of listed species or result

in the destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat.”

50 C.F.R. § 402.14(g)(4) (2022).

The FLPMA, for its part, declares “the policy of the United

States that . . . the public lands be managed in a manner that

will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical,

ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water

resource, and archeological values.” 43 U.S.C. § 1701(a)(8).

To that end, the Act directs BLM to “take any action necessary

to prevent unnecessary or undue degradation of the lands.” Id.

§ 1732(b).

B.

In June 2022, plaintiffs Center for Biological Diversity

(CBD or Center) and WildEarth Guardians, later joined by

plaintiffs Citizens Caring for the Future and New Mexico

Interfaith Power and Light, filed suit in the United States

District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S.

Department of the Interior, the Secretary of the Interior, BLM,

and the Bureau’s Director (Federal Appellees). Plaintiffs

ultimately challenged every permit to drill approved between

January 21, 2021, and August 31, 2022, by any of four BLM

Field Offices—Carlsbad or Roswell in New Mexico’s Permian

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Basin, and Casper or Buffalo in Wyoming’s Powder River

Basin. Am. Compl. ¶ 102 (J.A. 125-26).

Plaintiffs alleged that BLM authorized at least 4,019

qualifying APDs over that twenty-month period, and they

appended to their complaint a full list of the permits they

challenged. Critically, this case does not challenge any

Resource Management Plan or leasing decision—although

some of the Plaintiffs in this case have filed other litigation to

challenge the Bureau’s leasing authorizations in the relevant

regions. See WildEarth Guardians v. Bernhardt, 501 F. Supp.

3d 1192 (D.N.M. 2020) (holding that plaintiffs had standing to

challenge leasing of drilling rights on land in the Carlsbad

region in 2017 and 2018 but that the leasing did not violate

NEPA). Instead, Plaintiffs claim here that the Bureau’s

issuance of the challenged permits themselves violated NEPA,

the ESA, and the FLPMA.

Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint includes five counts. All

are brought under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), as

neither NEPA nor the FLPMA creates a private right of action,

Theodore Roosevelt Conservation P’ship v. Salazar, 616 F.3d

497, 507 (D.C. Cir. 2010), and judicial review of agency action

under the ESA is also governed by the APA, Union Neighbors

United, Inc. v. Jewell, 831 F.3d 564, 574 (D.C. Cir. 2016);

Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. Norton, 415 F.3d 8, 13 (D.C.

Cir. 2005). First, Plaintiffs claim that BLM’s permit approvals

violated NEPA because the environmental assessments

accompanying the approvals all failed to take a “hard look” at

the oil and gas wells’ cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and

resulting climate impacts. Second, they claim the Bureau’s

failure to properly consider the environmental justice impacts

of the challenged permit approvals also violated NEPA.

Plaintiffs’ next two claims allege that BLM violated the ESA

by failing to properly consult with the Services about the APD

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approvals’ impacts on species threatened by climate change,

and by failing to reinitiate consultation on the relevant

Resource Management Plans, and so acted arbitrarily and in

derogation of its duty to protect listed species and critical

habitat. Finally, Plaintiffs claim that, in approving the

challenged permits, BLM failed to prevent unnecessary or

undue degradation of public lands in violation of the FLPMA.

Plaintiffs request that the court vacate and set aside all the

challenged Permit approvals and enjoin Federal Appellees

from permitting any further drilling until BLM complies with

the relevant statutes.

A group of oil and gas industry associations and

companies holding the challenged permits (Intervenors), as

well as the state of Wyoming, successfully moved to intervene

to defend BLM’s permit approvals. Intervenors then moved to

dismiss arguing, among other things, that Plaintiffs lacked

standing to challenge the permit approvals because they had

not alleged any concrete and particularized injury linked to the

APDs at issue.

In opposition to the motion to dismiss, Plaintiffs offered

three distinct theories of standing, each supported by

supplemental declarations filed by Plaintiffs’ individual

members and officers:

First, they claimed associational standing for their NEPA

and FLPMA claims because their members lived, worked, and

recreated in two “APD Areas”—a term Plaintiffs coined to

refer to areas they define by imagined boundary lines—one

encompassing all the challenged APDs in New Mexico and one

encompassing all the challenged APDs in Wyoming. Plaintiffs

averred that their members’ health and their aesthetic,

recreational, and other interests are harmed by air pollution,

light pollution, traffic, and landscape effects associated with

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each group of wells. They relied primarily on the Tenth

Circuit’s decision in Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our

Environment v. Bernhardt, 923 F.3d 831 (10th Cir. 2019) (Diné

CARE), which held that a plaintiff organization had standing to

challenge more than 300 APDs in New Mexico based on

alleged harms to users of the area affected by oil and gas

activity. Plaintiffs told the district court in this case that, under

the logic of Diné CARE, they were not required to “catalog

discrete injuries from each discrete APD across the 4,000+ at

issue” or “catalog harm and geo-nexus to 4,000+ wells.”

Conservation Groups Mem. in Support of Response to Mot. to

Dismiss 11-12 (Conservation Groups Mem.) (J.A. 496-97).

Second, as to their ESA claims, Plaintiffs asserted

associational standing because their members observed and

studied wildlife facing threats from climate change that would

be exacerbated by emissions from the wells. The identified

affected species included songbirds in Hawaii, squirrels in

Arizona, butterflies in California, and coral reefs in Fiji.

Third, CBD claimed organizational standing for its ESA

claims on the ground that BLM’s failure to engage in the

required ESA consultation deprived it of information about

federal agency actions’ impact on species and so harmed its

ability to fulfill its organizational mission.

The district court granted Intervenors’ motion to dismiss

on the ground that Plaintiffs lacked standing. Emphasizing that

Plaintiffs must demonstrate standing for each challenged APD,

the court held that Plaintiffs had only claimed a “geographic

nexus to the broad ‘APD Areas’ [that] Plaintiffs created” and

therefore failed to assert “any individual member’s geographic

nexus to any specific wells or drilling sites.” Ctr. for

Biological Diversity v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, No. 22-cv-

01716, 2023 WL 7182041, at *4 (D.D.C. Nov. 1, 2023). The

9

district court distinguished Diné CARE as having “challenged

an agency action stemming from a single [EIS],” whereas

Plaintiffs here failed to identify any “single underlying agency

action applicable to the challenged [permit] approvals.” Id. at

*5.

The district court also held that CBD lacked organizational

standing for the ESA claims, concluding it had failed to tie “its

mission of protecting species to any particular [APD]

approval,” or explain “how its resource needs would change in

response to the approvals.” Id. at *4. The court did not

separately analyze Plaintiffs’ associational standing arguments

for their ESA claims based on their members’ interests in

species harmed by climate change.

Plaintiffs timely appealed. We have appellate jurisdiction

under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II.

We review de novo the district court’s judgment of

dismissal for lack of standing and, “[i]n determining standing,

we may consider materials outside of the complaint.” Food &

Water Watch, Inc. v. Vilsack, 808 F.3d 905, 913 (D.C. Cir.

2015). Because this case is before us at the pleading stage, we

accept as true the well-pleaded factual allegations in the

complaint or in declarations submitted in support of standing,

draw all reasonable inferences in plaintiffs’ favor, and

“presume that general allegations embrace those specific facts

that are necessary to support the claim.” Lujan v. Defs. of

Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992) (formatting modified); see

also Air Excursions LLC v. Yellen, 66 F.4th 272, 277 (D.C. Cir.

2023).

The Constitution limits the federal judicial power to

individual cases and controversies, and a proper case or

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controversy requires at least one plaintiff to demonstrate that

she has standing to sue. Murthy v. Missouri, 144 S. Ct. 1972,

1985-86 (2024). Standing necessitates an injury that is

“concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly

traceable to the challenged action; and redressable by a

favorable ruling.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398,

409 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). That injury

may result from an agency action that failed to follow some

statutorily required procedure, such as completing NEPA

environmental review or engaging in ESA consultation prior to

undertaking a specific action. WildEarth 2013, 738 F.3d at

304-05; Growth Energy, 5 F.4th at 27.

For claims of procedural injury under NEPA and the ESA,

the imminence and redressability prongs of standing are

somewhat relaxed. See Growth Energy, 5 F.4th at 27; see also

Ctr. for L. and Educ. v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ., 396 F.3d 1152,

1157 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (“Where plaintiffs allege injury resulting

from violation of a procedural right afforded to them by statute

and designed to protect their threatened concrete interest, the

courts relax—while not wholly eliminating—the issues of

imminence and redressability, but not the issues of injury in

fact or causation.”). For causation, a plaintiff “must show two

links: one connecting the omitted procedural step to some

substantive government decision that may have been wrongly

decided because of the lack of [compliance with] that

procedural requirement and one connecting that substantive

decision to the plaintiff’s particularized injury.” Growth

Energy, 5 F.4th at 27 (internal quotation marks omitted). For

redressability of a procedural injury, a plaintiff need not show

that “compliance with the procedure would alter the final

agency decision,” but only that the agency “could reach a

different conclusion if ordered to revisit its procedural error.”

Id. at 27-28 (formatting modified). However, even a plaintiff

claiming procedural injury must show how the agency’s error

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could affect her “concrete interests.” Id. at 27. “Unless there

is a substantial probability that the substantive agency action

that disregarded a procedural requirement created a

demonstrable risk, or caused a demonstrable increase in an

existing risk, of injury to the particularized interests of the

plaintiff, the plaintiff lacks standing.” Fla. Audubon Soc’y v.

Bentsen, 94 F.3d 658, 669 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (en banc)

(formatting altered). To have such a particularized interest, a

plaintiff “must use the area affected by the challenged activity

and not an area roughly ‘in the vicinity’ of it.” Lujan, 504 U.S.

at 566 (quoting Lujan v. Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n, 497 U.S. 871,

887-88 (1990)).

A plaintiff “must demonstrate standing for each claim [it]

seeks to press” and “for each form of relief sought,” even if the

various claims are derived from similar facts or raise similar

legal questions. DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332,

352 (2006) (formatting altered). In both the district court and

here, Plaintiffs have resisted this basic principle. Before the

district court, Plaintiffs denied any obligation to identify a

“harm and geo-nexus” to the specific permits they sought to

challenge. Conservation Groups Mem. 12-13 (J.A. 497-98).

And in their opening brief to our court, Plaintiffs maintained

that Diné CARE relieved them of their burden “to establish

standing for each well individually.” Conservation Groups Br.

15.

Federal Appellees acknowledge that plaintiffs may use

“common allegations or evidence to establish standing to

challenge multiple agency actions,” such as alleging

“recreational or aesthetic harms that are fairly traceable to

multiple permits.” Federal Appellees Br. 19. As Federal

Appellees observed before the district court, a plaintiff “may

define the ‘affected area’ for each APD in any number of

overlapping ways, such as by visual site [sic] lines, relevant air

12

sheds, or anticipated range of resulting noise pollution.” Defs’

Resp. to Def-Intervenors’ Mot. to Dismiss 13 (J.A. 477). But

even when established with common support, their standing

depends on a showing of injury, causation, and redressability

that implicates each individual challenged APD. Federal

Appellees Br. 19; Intervenors Br. 25-30.

When pressed at argument, even Plaintiffs ultimately

recognized their duty to establish standing for every permit and

therefore to allege how all the challenged APDs contribute to

their injury in fact. Oral Arg. Tr. 5:15-6:20. We proceed to

assess Plaintiffs’ proffered theories of standing under that basic

framework to determine whether they have met their pleading-

stage burden to plausibly allege standing. See Humane Soc’y

v. Vilsack, 797 F.3d 4, 8 (D.C. Cir. 2015).

III.

Plaintiffs offer two theories of “associational” or

“representative” standing based on the injuries incurred by

their individual members. To claim associational standing,

Plaintiffs must show that (1) at least one of their members

would have standing to sue in their own right, (2) the interests

the members seek to protect are germane to their organizations’

purposes, and (3) the members need not participate

individually in the lawsuit. ITServe All., Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of

Homeland Sec., 71 F.4th 1028, 1032 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (citing

Hunt v. Wash. State Apple Advert. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343

(1977)). Only the first prong—the Article III standing of

Plaintiffs’ individual members—is at issue here. Because

Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that any individual

member would plausibly have standing to challenge any or all

13

the APDs under either of the two theories, we hold that they

lack associational standing.

A.

Plaintiffs first argue that they have associational standing

for their claims that the permit approvals violated NEPA and

the FLPMA because their individual members attested that

they experience a variety of harms within Plaintiffs’ self-

defined “APD Areas” that they allege are caused by oil and gas

development and will be intensified by the authorization of the

disputed wells. It is well established that environmental

plaintiffs adequately allege standing “when they aver that they

use the affected area and are persons for whom the aesthetic

and recreational values of the area will be lessened by the

challenged activity.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw

Env’t Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 183 (2000) (internal

quotation marks omitted). We have, for example, found

standing when plaintiffs made recreational use of waters and

coastlines where the Department of the Interior granted leases

for oil and gas development, Ctr. for Sustainable Econ. v.

Jewell, 779 F.3d 588, 596 (D.C. Cir. 2015), and when plaintiffs

had aesthetic and recreational interests in lands where BLM

had offered leases for mining because pollution threatening

those interests “follow[ed] inexorably” from the challenged

agency action, WildEarth 2013, 738 F.3d at 305-06. See also

Calif. Cmtys. Against Toxics v. EPA, 928 F.3d 1041, 1049

(D.C. Cir. 2019) (finding standing because reasonable fear of

harm from hazardous waste pollution caused petitioners

reduced enjoyment of the outdoors); Sierra Club v. U.S. Dep’t

of Transp., 125 F.4th 1170, 1180-82 (D.C. Cir. 2025) (finding

standing based on safety risks and “increased disruption to []

peace and quiet” caused by increased rail traffic) (internal

quotation marks omitted); Sierra Club v. FERC, 867 F.3d

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1357, 1365-66 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (finding standing based on

noise pollution).

To support their standing, Plaintiffs primarily rely on

declarations submitted by Kayley Shoup and Rebecca Sobel as

to New Mexico and Jeremy Nichols and Erik Molvar as to

Wyoming, each of whom is a member of at least one plaintiff

organization. The declarations discuss in detail the injuries

sustained by Plaintiffs’ members within the APD Areas as a

result of oil and gas development, including exposure to smog,

haze, and pollutants harmful to human health and public

welfare (traceable to an array of emissions, including

particulate matter, ozone, benzene ethylene, toluene, and

xylene), the degradation of the appearance of public lands by

oil and gas infrastructure, noise pollution and dangerous roads

caused by increased heavy truck traffic, earthquakes linked to

hydraulic fracking, and the disturbance of local wildlife. They

explain how those effects can be felt in specific locations where

Plaintiffs’ members have lived, worked, or recreated. And they

assert their members’ intent to return to those places in the

future.

There is no dispute that Plaintiffs’ declarations present, as

Federal Appellees concede, “the kinds of submissions that

often support standing to challenge a particular project.”

Federal Appellees Br. 28. Together, they readily demonstrate

that Plaintiffs’ members are among those who use the areas

described in the affidavits and whose health, safety, aesthetic,

or recreational interests are likely to be harmed by oil and gas

activity that affects those locations. See Laidlaw, 528 U.S. at

183. The problem for Plaintiffs is that they have not alleged

whether or how the newly permitted wells will cause those

harms at the locations they identify as where they live, work,

or travel. Plaintiffs cannot rely on allegations of the kinds of

concrete harms generally associated with oil and gas extraction

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to challenge permits for oil and gas extraction across thousands

of square miles of New Mexico and Wyoming without linking

their experience of those harms to the challenged permits—by,

for example, identifying the nature and range of the wells’

impact(s).

As we have emphasized, Plaintiffs’ claims require that

they trace their injury to the drilling permits they seek to

challenge. To attempt to do so, Plaintiffs describe their

members’ nexus only to an “APD Area” in each state, which

Plaintiffs define as the region created by “drawing a line around

where the challenged wells will be drilled” in each state on

maps created by Plaintiffs for this litigation. See Shoup Decl.

¶ 13 (J.A. 530); Clauser Decl. Exs. 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, 1-D (J.A.

519-26). Generally speaking, given the dispersion of the New

Mexico wells at issue, as depicted in Figure 1, the APD Area

apparently spans more than 80 miles from north to south, and

a similar distance from east to west to include all the permitted

well sites. The area encompassing all the wells in Wyoming,

depicted in Figure 2, is even larger.

16

Fig. 1: Clauser Decl. Ex. 1-B (J.A. 522), depicting the

challenged APDs in New Mexico.

17

Fig. 2: Clauser Decl. Ex. 1-D (J.A. 526), depicting the

challenged APDs in Wyoming.

18

The relevant declarations do identify specific locations

where Plaintiffs’ members have experienced harms linked to

oil and gas development, such as Carlsbad Caverns National

Park in New Mexico and portions of Thunder Basin National

Grassland in Wyoming. But they fail to demonstrate causal

links between harms at those locations and the APD approvals

that Plaintiffs seek to reverse. For example, Shoup resides in

Carlsbad—within the New Mexico APD Area—and her

declaration alleges that oil and gas wells cause haze that affects

her recreational activities in and around the city. Shoup Decl.

¶¶ 12, 15, 18 (J.A. 530-31, 534). However, she does not allege

which challenged permits will likely cause or contribute to

those harms. Plaintiffs simply contend that all of them will,

without sufficiently explaining the reach of the wells’ effects—

individually or together—to make that contention plausible or

amenable to meaningful review.

It seems likely that the challenged wells located closest to

Shoup’s home or to the identified roads and places she

frequents will contribute to haze affecting her, but the record

offers no means for us to confirm as much—particularly as to

Plaintiffs’ claims extending to permits to drill wells at distances

of 10, 20, or 50 miles from Carlsbad. Plaintiffs’ declarations

do not, for example, describe the geographic reach of any

individual well’s likely contribution to the various types of

harmful effects—haze, noxious emissions, visual blight on the

landscape, noise and light pollution, increased heavy vehicle

traffic, and seismic activity—that they ascribe to oil and gas

development. And they do not specify which of Plaintiffs’

members routinely recreate within the reach of those

particularized effects. To the contrary, Plaintiffs fail to assert

the geographic extent of any of the injuries allegedly caused by

any of the challenged APDs. They thus give us no basis to

credit their claims that wells at varying distances from where

they live, work, and recreate cause their identified harms.

19

The point is not that we question whether the asserted

harmful effects extend beyond the specific well sites, but that

Plaintiffs have provided no information at all as to how far they

typically extend. For example, plausible allegations that

drilling at a permitted site typically emits stench or noxious

chemicals for an 80-mile radius would presumably suffice to

establish that drilling inflicts those harms on persons anywhere

within Plaintiffs’ New Mexico APD area; a smaller radius

would require allegations that Plaintiffs experience effects at

various specified locations within sufficient proximity to

subsets of the wells. But Plaintiffs allege only generally that a

“rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide” is common across the

APD Area, without providing information that would allow us

to assess whether and where the newly permitted wells they

challenge will plausibly contribute to that effect. Id. ¶ 22 (J.A.

535).

To take another example, Plaintiffs might trace new wells

to visible blight by alleging that the size of the typical drilling

apparatus and the sightlines around identified groups of

permitted drill sites make them visible to at least one of the

Plaintiffs from the roads or other locations where they travel,

live, or visit. Instead, Plaintiffs’ visibility claims are more

general: The Nichols Declaration, for instance, avers that the

wells’ effect on the landscape “would be visible from many

public lands vantage points in the region where [he] ha[s]

recreated and plan[s] to recreate,” Nichols Decl. ¶ 27 (J.A.

562), but makes no effort to identify which permitted wells’

effects would be visible from which locations.

Without such information as to the ambit of any of the

asserted effects of the permitted wells, we cannot determine

whether it is plausible that any individual APD likely interferes

with Nichols’ or any other member-affiant’s recreational

interests in any particular place. That question turns on the

20

scope of an asserted effect, which may be influenced by

associated variables like air currents or the specific topography

or sightlines across New Mexico and Wyoming. We need not

speculate as to what facts would suffice to establish that a given

type of effect of the permitted activity likely injures Plaintiffs.

It is dispositive that all of Plaintiffs’ supporting materials are

silent on the critical question of which APDs are alleged to

cause which harms in which of the locations Plaintiffs frequent,

leaving us unable meaningfully to review their claims that all

the challenged agency actions will likely cause them harm.

Plaintiffs cannot overcome this fatal defect by treating the

permits as if they were a single action affecting a unitary APD

Area, without information that the effect of any one well on

any plaintiff anywhere in that vast area suffices to support their

challenge to the entire batch. As each APD is a distinct agency

action, plaintiffs must establish standing as to each. See

Murthy, 144 S. Ct. at 1988 (“plaintiffs must demonstrate

standing for each claim they press . . . and for each form of

relief that they seek”) (internal quotation marks omitted);

Friends of Animals v. Bernhardt, 961 F.3d 1197, 1204-05

(D.C. Cir. 2020) (plaintiffs must prove standing for each

“discrete regulatory action” based on the “discrete effects” of

that action). The fact that Plaintiffs have elected to combine

their claims against more than 4,000 APDs into one case does

not convert the separate permitting actions into a single federal

agency action.

Moreover, the use of an “APD Area” as a shortcut for

standing, untethered to any information about the range of the

challenged wells’ effects, lacks a limiting principle. At oral

argument, Plaintiffs’ counsel accepted that their declarations

would not suffice to demonstrate standing to challenge a

hypothetical additional well 50 miles north of Roswell, New

Mexico, Oral Arg. Tr. 19:1-16, even though Plaintiffs could

21

easily have drawn an “APD Area” to contain such a well and

recited the same list of harms caused by oil and gas

development affecting their activities within that APD Area.

That well-advised concession demonstrates the weakness of

Plaintiffs’ theory of standing. If that hypothetical well is too

far-flung for Plaintiffs to challenge based on the record in this

case, why is the same not true for the widely dispersed wells

they do seek to challenge? Because Plaintiffs neglect to

identify the geographic ambit of the harms caused by an agency

decision to approve an APD, Plaintiffs ultimately offer no way

to distinguish their standing to challenge the APDs at issue here

from their standing relative to any other permit in New Mexico,

Wyoming, or elsewhere.

Our holding should not be understood as obliging

Plaintiffs to submit a voluminous complaint featuring separate,

duplicative allegations for each of the 4,000 challenged wells.

As Federal Appellees have acknowledged, Plaintiffs may

“define the ‘affected area’ for each APD in any number of

overlapping ways.” Defs’ Resp. to Def-Intervenors’ Mot. to

Dismiss 13 (J.A. 477). And they may, where appropriate, “rely

on common allegations or evidence to establish standing to

challenge multiple agency actions,” such that the allegations

supporting standing to challenge different permits “may

overlap to a significant degree, or even entirely.” Federal

Appellees Br. 19. For example, Plaintiffs might allege that a

well causes a cognizable type of harm—such as smog, ozone,

or stench—within a specified radius. Allegations that one of

their members recreated at a single location within the

overlapping radii of more than one well could suffice to

demonstrate “concrete and particularized injury . . . due to

geographic proximity to the action[s] challenged that gives rise

to Article III standing” to challenge multiple permits. City of

Olmsted Falls v. FAA, 292 F.3d 261, 267 (D.C. Cir. 2002).

22

The point is that Plaintiffs must somehow establish an

injury in fact traceable to every challenged well. On this record

as Plaintiffs describe it, different parts of the APD Area may or

may not be distinctly affected by some or all of the challenged

approvals. They cannot simply assert that their members’

presence in a large APD Area automatically grants standing to

challenge every APD listed in the complaint. Plaintiffs object

that it is incongruous to require them to identify injury from

each permit when BLM’s own permitting process ignores any

such “site-specific” differences across wells. Reply Br. 11. As

discussed above, each of the permits challenged in this case is

accompanied by a brief “environmental assessment,” rather

than a full EIS. Instead of conducting a full analysis of the

anticipated environmental harms of each APD based on those

wells’ individual characteristics and exact locations, the

Bureau’s own environmental assessments largely “tier” back

and incorporate by reference a relatively detailed but shared

analysis of the effects of oil and gas production that

accompanied earlier agency actions, such as a Resource

Management Plan. See, e.g., Environmental Assessment: Titan

Exploration LLC Nine Mile T41R74S22SWSE Oil and Gas

Well Pad, at 2 (J.A. 751). Indeed, BLM’s pace of operations—

approving over 4,000 challenged permits over a twenty-month

period—essentially foreclosed the Bureau from creating a

tailored environmental analysis for each well.

If Plaintiffs are correct that BLM has failed to properly

account for the cumulative impacts of the wells—and we take

no position on the merits of Plaintiffs’ arguments at this stage

of the proceedings—that might mean that each of the

challenged permits violates NEPA for the same reason, such as

a failure to consider the “incremental effects of the action when

added to the effects of other past, present, and reasonably

foreseeable actions.” 40 C.F.R. § 1508.1(g)(3) (2022). Even

if the challenged permits all suffer from the same legal defect,

23

however, the Constitution requires Plaintiffs to demonstrate an

injury linked to each distinct federal action.

Plaintiffs urge us to follow the Tenth Circuit in Diné

CARE, which considered and rejected similar objections to an

analogous factual showing in support of standing to challenge

hundreds of drilling permits. In Diné CARE, environmental

organizations (including one of the plaintiffs in this case)

brought a wholesale challenge to the grant of approximately

350 APDs in the Mancos Shale in the Greater Chaco region of

northeast New Mexico. Diné CARE, 923 F.3d at 835, 838 n.2.

The Diné CARE plaintiffs’ standing affidavits described their

members’ activities in various locations in the Greater Chaco

region and their exposure to traffic, foul odors, light pollution,

and other harms resulting from oil and gas activity. Id. at 842.

The Tenth Circuit sustained plaintiffs’ standing, rejecting

the government’s argument that plaintiffs had failed to

“establish standing for each challenged APD approval” with

affidavits that only “refer[red] generally to the ‘greater Chaco

region’ or the ‘Mancos Shale formation’” instead of individual

well sites. Id. (formatting altered). It emphasized that no court

had “ever required an environmental plaintiff to show that it

has traversed each bit of land that will be affected by a

challenged agency action.” Id. (quoting S. Utah Wilderness

All. v. Palma, 707 F.3d 1143, 1155 (10th Cir. 2013)). The

Tenth Circuit concluded that plaintiffs’ use of maps to show

the geographic proximity of the well sites to locations where

their members lived and recreated, combined with the nature of

plaintiffs’ challenge to the “indirect and cumulative impacts of

the APDs” extending “beyond the boundaries of the well sites

and into the greater Chaco landscape,” sufficed to demonstrate

the required injury in fact. Id. at 842-43.

24

We acknowledge that the allegations and affidavits in

support of standing in Diné CARE bear a strong resemblance

to those in this case—unsurprisingly so, given the overlap in

parties, attorneys, and declarants in the two cases. The district

court here distinguished Diné CARE as challenging one agency

action encompassing all the permits. 2023 WL 7182041, at *5.

That does not appear to be quite right: The Tenth Circuit

understood that the plaintiffs’ claims were “in the form of

challenges to numerous individual APDs,” rather than to a

common agency action underlying all the wells (such as a

Resource Management Plan or leasing decision). Diné CARE,

923 F.3d at 843. In our view, Diné CARE is not distinguishable

in the way the district court thought.

Nonetheless, we agree that our decision is not clearly in

conflict with Diné CARE. The Tenth Circuit itself provides a

more modest and defensible reading of Diné CARE than

Plaintiffs urge here, suggesting that its plaintiffs’ standing

rested not just on their identification of activities in a large

region some part of which was affected by the challenged

APDs, but on the fact that those plaintiffs “regularly visited

near the well sites and thus established a ‘geographic nexus to

the site’” of the permits they sought to challenge. Rocky

Mountain Peace & Just. Ctr. v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv., 40

F.4th 1133, 1153 (10th Cir. 2022) (formatting altered) (quoting

Diné CARE, 923 F.3d at 841). The scope of the challenge here

is much broader, involving more than ten times as many APDs

spread over what appear to be substantially larger areas in two

different states. Compare Clauser Decl. Exs. 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, 1-

D (J.A. 519-26), with Dorsey Decl. Ex. A, Diné CARE, 923

F.3d 831 (Diné CARE J.A. 423) (mapping the challenged APD

locations in Diné CARE).

The Tenth Circuit’s decision is in any case not binding on

this court, and to the extent that Diné CARE confers standing

25

to challenge multiple agency actions without a demonstrated

injury caused by each action, as Plaintiffs contend, we must

reject it as inconsistent with precedent binding on this court.

For the reasons discussed above, Plaintiffs cannot establish

standing without demonstrating the requisite causal link

between the challenged drilling permits and the concrete harms

they identify.

The district court described the defect in Plaintiffs’

arguments as a failure to “allege a cognizable injury in fact.”

2023 WL 7182041, at *5. But, as we have emphasized, the

injuries described in Plaintiffs’ declarations could suffice to

show standing to challenge the permits they identify if they

were to specify the causal mechanism connecting their harms

to the individual agency actions. We therefore affirm the

judgment of the district court dismissing all of Plaintiffs’

NEPA and FLPMA claims on the alternative ground that

Plaintiffs have failed to show the requisite causal link between

a “substantive government decision that may have been

wrongly decided” and “the plaintiff’s particularized injury”

needed to support their standing. Growth Energy, 5 F.4th at 27

(internal quotation marks omitted).

We will not at this stage comb through Plaintiffs’

declarations and supporting materials to attempt to ascertain

whether their asserted injuries can be plausibly traced to at least

some of the permits at issue, even if not all of them. Plaintiffs,

who “bear the burden to establish standing by setting forth

specific facts,” Murthy, 144 S. Ct. at 1991 n.7 (formatting

altered), have persisted throughout this case with an “all-or-

nothing” theory of standing. They do not explain how they

might still have standing even if their more expansive theory

fails—by, for example, concretely identifying how specified

groups of wells harm identified plaintiffs. We decline to

“hunt[] for truffles buried in . . . the record” to draw the

26

concrete links between individual injuries and individual wells

that Plaintiffs have neglected to unearth in their own

submissions. See Jones v. Kirchner, 835 F.3d 74, 83 (D.C. Cir.

2016) (internal quotation marks omitted). Plaintiffs are free to

clarify those connections in future litigation—or, alternatively,

establish standing to levy a wholesale challenge against a

broader agency action, such as a decision to authorize multiple

parcels for leasing that underlies development of a large

number of individual wells. See Ctr. for Sustainable Econ.,

779 F.3d at 592-93; WildEarth 2013, 738 F.3d at 302.

B.

Plaintiffs also claim associational standing for their

Endangered Species Act challenges. Their members attest that

the permits’ contributions to climate change will intensify

threats to listed habitats and species that they travel to observe

and study. The Bureau says Plaintiffs’ showing falls short

because no affiant asserts a risk of ESA-cognizable harms in

the Permian or Powder River Basins; they rely instead on the

contribution of the permitted oil and gas development to global

climate change that, in turn, will likely affect the listed habitats

and species they view and study elsewhere.

The district court did not separately discuss plaintiffs’

associational standing to sue under the ESA. Plaintiffs ask us

to remand for the district court to consider the issue in the first

instance. But the dispute is a legal one subject to our de novo

consideration. It has been fully briefed here, the relevant

pleadings and declarations are in the record before us, and we

may affirm the district court’s judgment “on any ground

supported by the record.” Meza v. Renaud, 9 F.4th 930, 933

(D.C. Cir. 2021). We accordingly decide the question of

Plaintiffs’ associational standing for their ESA claims and hold

that they have failed to plausibly allege standing.

27

Like the NEPA and FLPMA claims discussed above,

Plaintiffs’ ESA claims are procedural, resting on averments

that Plaintiffs’ members are injured by the Bureau’s failure to

engage in the required ESA consultation with the Services. An

environmental organization may establish associational

standing to bring a procedural ESA claim by showing that a

failure to consult “demonstrably increased some specific risk

of environmental harms that imperil the members’

particularized interests in a species or habitat with which the

members share a geographic nexus.” Growth Energy, 5 F.4th

at 27 (internal quotation marks omitted).

In their declarations, Plaintiffs’ members identify adverse

effects of climate change on various covered species and

habitats that they visit, observe, and study. For example, Robin

Silver frequently visits Mount Graham in Arizona to

photograph the Mount Graham Red Squirrel, whose remaining

habitat is threatened by drought and wildfires exacerbated by

climate change. Silver Decl. ¶¶ 9-14 (J.A. 651-54). Brett Hartl

regularly visits the Hawaiian Islands to observe rare birds

threatened by the climate-change induced spread of mosquitos

that transmit avian malaria. Hartl Decl. ¶¶ 19-23 (J.A. 585-86).

And Steven Amstrup researches the movements, distribution,

and population dynamics of polar bears who face potential

extinction due to climate change’s degradation of their Arctic

habitats. Amstrup Decl. ¶¶ 11, 23-34, 57-62 (J.A. 659, 662-66,

672-74). Those and other declarations likely suffice to allege

the particularized interest in individual species and habitats

required for standing.

Plaintiffs assert that each of the challenged wells will add

to greenhouse gas emissions that, by contributing to climate

change, likely will intensify threats to the climate-imperiled

species and habitats their pleadings and declarations identify.

Our court’s precedent suggests, however, that environmental

28

plaintiffs cannot demonstrate the required concrete and

particularized harm to their interests only by asserting that a

challenged government action will contribute to a particular

harmful effect of global climate change. See Growth Energy,

5 F.4th at 27. Petitioners in Center for Biological Diversity v.

U.S. Dep’t of the Interior (CBD v. DOI), 563 F.3d 466 (D.C.

Cir. 2009), for example, claimed that approval of new oil and

gas drilling on the outer continental shelf of Alaska would emit

greenhouse gases known to contribute to climate change likely

to harm local “species and ecosystems.” Id. at 475-76. We

concluded that petitioners “lack[ed] standing on their

substantive climate change theory” because “climate change is

a harm that is shared by humanity at large,” and a desire to

“prevent an increase in global temperature” is “too generalized

to establish standing” even when plaintiffs have a

particularized interest in vulnerable species and ecosystems.

Id. at 475-76, 478.

Plaintiffs counter that in CBD v. DOI we rejected only the

claim of “substantive” injury caused by an agency action while

allowing the petitioners to proceed on their theory of

procedural injury. But we similarly held that the plaintiffs in

WildEarth 2013 had standing because they demonstrated “a

separate injury in fact not caused by climate change—the harm

to their members’ recreational and aesthetic interests from

local pollution”—to ground their challenge to the agency’s

deficient consideration of the diffuse and unpredictable effects

of greenhouse gas emissions. 738 F.3d at 307.

Even assuming an injury resulting from climate change

may support standing, plaintiffs must connect the challenged

action to that injury. Given that climate change results from

the combined effects of greenhouse gas emissions around the

globe, plaintiffs resting on injury from climate change must

also allege that their personal injury is traceable to the

29

challenged action and likely redressable by a favorable judicial

decision. Here, Plaintiffs’ declarations speak generally of the

harm to climate-imperiled species and habitats without

addressing how those harms flow from the greenhouse gas

emissions associated with the wells they challenge. See, e.g.,

Nagano Decl. ¶ 23 (J.A. 645) (acknowledging that the

challenged APDs represent “a fraction of the total greenhouse

emissions” from BLM lands and asserting in general terms that

the emissions will result “in significant harm to threatened and

endangered species”); Silver Decl. ¶¶ 12-16 (J.A. 653-55)

(discussing climate change’s impact on the Mount Graham Red

Squirrel’s habitat and generally alleging that the challenged

permits will result in “substantial global emissions,” without

addressing those emissions’ link to the harms averred). Even

if Plaintiffs have identified qualifying injuries, they have not

plausibly alleged that, if EPA were ordered to revisit the

specific procedural errors they seek to challenge, it is

“substantially probable” that their injuries would be

ameliorated. Growth Energy, 5 F.4th at 29. Plaintiffs must

offer more to establish a justiciable case or controversy.

IV.

Plaintiff CBD also claims standing to pursue the ESA

claims in its own right as an organization, separate from

associational standing on behalf of its members. Like an

individual, an organization can establish standing by showing

“an actual or threatened injury in fact that is fairly traceable to

the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be

redressed by a favorable court decision.” Am. Anti-Vivisection

Soc’y v. USDA, 946 F.3d 615, 618 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (internal

quotation marks omitted). An organization demonstrates a

sufficient injury in fact by alleging a “‘concrete and

demonstrable injury to the organization’s activities’ that is

‘more than simply a setback to the organization’s abstract

30

social interests.’” Id. (quoting Havens Realty Corp. v.

Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 379 (1982)). However, the

“expenditure of resources on advocacy is not a cognizable

Article III injury.” Turlock Irrigation Dist. v. FERC, 786 F.3d

18, 24 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks omitted). We

hold that because the Center identifies no harm to its own

activities apart from its advocacy, it has failed to demonstrate

that it suffered the required injury and therefore lacks

organizational standing.

CBD alleges that BLM’s failure to engage in ESA

consultation has deprived CBD of information about the

challenged permits’ impacts on threatened species and habitats

that would have otherwise been disclosed in the final biological

opinion. As a result, to pursue its mission of “getting [species]

the ESA protection they need to survive,” the Center has had

to expend resources pursuing Freedom of Information Act

requests for relevant government data with which to advocate

for reforms to the ESA consultation process to better protect

climate-imperiled species. Hartl Decl. ¶ 14 (J.A. 583). Those

injuries are insufficient to support organizational standing.

The Center does not assert an injury to its non-advocacy

operations analogous to the harms to animal-rescue and

cruelty-prevention activities that supported organizational

standing in American Anti-Vivisection Society and People for

the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. U.S. Dep’t of Agriculture

(PETA), 797 F.3d 1087 (D.C. Cir. 2015). See also Action All.

of Senior Citizens v. Heckler, 789 F.2d 931, 937 (D.C. Cir.

1986) (finding standing where plaintiff organizations “rest[ed]

their claims on programmatic concerns, not on wholly

speculative or purely ideological interests in the agency’s

action”). In PETA, we emphasized that the challenged agency

inaction affected the organization’s public education program

because the agency’s failure to produce for birds the inspection

31

reports the agency routinely generates for other animals whose

handling and care it regulates shifted to the plaintiff

organization the burden to “investigate and respond to

complaints about birds subjected to inhumane treatment,

and/or to obtain appropriate and necessary relief for these

animals.” 797 F.3d at 1095-96. In American Anti-Vivisection

Society, organizational standing rested on a program of public

education, including “How To Guides, webinars, and

informational pamphlets that are designed to help shelters and

care facilities tend to the needs of birds” left unprotected due

to the agency’s failure to promulgate statutorily required

standards for the humane treatment of birds in captivity. 946

F.3d at 619 (internal quotation marks omitted).

CBD’s asserted injuries, by contrast, are limited to issue

advocacy. It explains that it must work harder to gather

information and expend additional resources to lobby the

federal government, file rulemaking petitions, request

improved policies, and in other ways urge the government to

better protect endangered and threatened species and habitats.

Hartl Decl. ¶¶ 9-14 (J.A. 582-84). Unlike the organizations in

the decisions on which it relies, CBD does not identify

programmatic expenditures it must make to fill the gap left by

the Department of the Interior’s failure to analyze and propose

measures to ameliorate effects on endangered species of

climate change caused by the permitted oil drilling. Our

conclusion is bolstered by the Supreme Court’s recent decision

in FDA. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U.S. 367

(2024), which described Havens Realty—the foundation of our

organizational injury precedents—as an “unusual case” and

cautioned against extending it beyond circumstances in which

32

the challenged action “directly affected and interfered with [a

plaintiff’s] core business activities.” Id. at 395-96.

V.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the

district court.

So ordered.