When Forest Restoration Collides With Endangered Species Protection

On paper, both sides of this project were about conservation.

The McCormick Oak-Hickory Restoration Project was not proposed simply to produce timber.

The Forest Service described the work as an intermediate thinning project intended to reduce overcrowding in a section of Shawnee National Forest in Pope County. By removing selected hardwood trees, managers hoped to open portions of the canopy, reduce competition for water and nutrients, and maintain oak-hickory forest conditions. [1] [3]

That objective fits a much larger management problem in southern Illinois. Oak-hickory forests developed under disturbance conditions that are difficult to reproduce in modern forests. Without intervention, shade-tolerant species can gradually replace oak in some stands. Shawnee National Forest planning documents explicitly recognize thinning, prescribed fire, and other disturbance as tools for maintaining oak-hickory systems. [4]

But the same trees being evaluated for removal can also function as wildlife habitat.

In this case, that included potential summer habitat for the federally endangered Indiana bat.

The sequence of events became the legal problem.

The central issue was not simply what the agencies concluded about the Indiana bat. It was when those conclusions became part of the decision.

That final ruling vacated the 2024 Decision Memo and returned the project to the Forest Service. [1]

Why would forest restoration involve cutting trees?

That question is central to understanding the dispute.

Forests are not automatically healthier simply because they contain more trees. In an overstocked stand, too many trees can compete for limited growing space, water, nutrients, and light. The Forest Service said those conditions were reducing resilience to drought, insects, and disease in the McCormick project area. [2]

Selective thinning is one method foresters use to change those conditions. Removing some trees can create canopy gaps, reduce competition, and provide additional sunlight for oak regeneration.

Shawnee’s broader forest plan describes active disturbance as part of maintaining oak-hickory forest and preventing a continued shift toward more shade-tolerant forest types. [4]

The Indiana bat made the timing of tree removal matter.

The Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) has been federally protected for decades and remains listed as endangered.

During winter, Indiana bats concentrate in caves and mines. During the warmer part of the year, forests become critical habitat. Reproductive females form maternity colonies, and summer roosts are commonly located beneath loose or peeling bark on large living or dead trees. [5]

They also forage through forested habitat, along edges, and around riparian areas.

Surveys in the McCormick project area detected acoustic calls attributed to Indiana bats and tri-colored bats. Follow-up mist-net surveys did not capture either species, and investigators did not identify evidence of an Indiana bat maternity colony in the project area. [2]

But the Forest Service’s own biological assessment concluded that Indiana bats were likely to be adversely affected by the project because an individual bat could be injured or killed if an occupied roost tree were cut. [1]

That did not mean the project necessarily threatened the species as a whole. It meant that formal consultation under the Endangered Species Act had become part of the required decision process.

The biological opinion was supposed to inform the decision.

Once a federal agency determines that a proposed action may adversely affect a listed species, Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act requires formal consultation with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

That consultation results in a biological opinion evaluating the project’s effects and whether the action is likely to jeopardize a listed species.

The Forest Service argued that the timing caused no meaningful harm. The timber sale was not advertised until after the biological opinion had been issued, and the agency maintained that the final document contained little information it did not already know.

Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel rejected that argument.

The court concluded that consultation is supposed to occur before final agency action so that the biological opinion can influence whether—and in what manner—the agency proceeds. [1]

The difference was more than six weeks of paperwork.

The final biological opinion focused attention on one practical risk: cutting potential roost trees while Indiana bats could be using them.

The court discussed existing forest-plan protections restricting removal of potential roost trees between April 1 and September 30, subject to specified exceptions. [1]

The McCormick project did not impose a blanket requirement that the contractor wait until the inactive season to conduct the commercial harvest.

Logging began in August 2025.

That turned the difference between the earlier Forest Service analysis and the later biological opinion into something the court could not dismiss as harmless.

The Forest Service might still have approved the same treatment after reviewing the biological opinion. It might have imposed different timing restrictions or modified how the remaining work would occur.

The point is that the agency was supposed to make that choice after consultation was complete.

By the time the dispute reached court, much of the work was already done.

Commercial thinning began in August 2025 and continued for roughly eight days before the court issued a temporary restraining order.

Approximately 40 of the project’s 67 acres had been treated by that point. [1] [6]

The temporary order did not become a long-term injunction. On September 11, 2025, the court rejected the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction after determining that they had not shown a sufficient likelihood of success on their original NEPA claim. [2]

The contractor was then legally able to resume work.

It did not.

The project remained dormant while the litigation continued, and the plaintiffs later added the Endangered Species Act issue that ultimately succeeded.

What the judge did—and did not—decide.

The court granted summary judgment on the Endangered Species Act issue, vacated the Forest Service’s decision, and remanded the matter to the agency. [1]

That leaves the Forest Service free to reconsider the project using the completed consultation and determine what should happen next.

Restoration projects can create their own ecological risks.

That sounds contradictory only if restoration is treated as a synonym for “good.”

Restoration is an objective. The actions used to reach that objective still have effects.

A manager may thin trees to improve oak regeneration while temporarily reducing roosting opportunities for a forest bat. Prescribed fire may improve a fire-dependent plant community while creating short-term disturbance for another species. Removing invasive vegetation may benefit native plants while temporarily altering cover used by wildlife.

Those conflicts do not mean managers should stop managing.

They mean the ecological goal of a project cannot substitute for evaluating what the project actually does.

That distinction connects directly with adaptive management . A defensible management system has to identify objectives, evaluate risk, monitor results, and remain capable of changing course when evidence changes.

In the Shawnee case, federal law added another requirement: endangered-species consultation needed to be part of that decision before the agency committed to the action.

The harder question is how agencies choose between ecological risks.

A simple political framing would put the Forest Service on one side, environmental groups on the other, and label the dispute “logging versus conservation.”

That misses what makes the case useful.

The Forest Service had an ecological argument for intervention. Oak-hickory systems can require disturbance and active management to maintain the conditions managers are trying to conserve.

The Indiana bat also presented a legitimate ecological concern, backed by federal protection and the possibility that individual bats could occupy trees selected for removal.

Those facts can both be true.

Doing nothing changes a forest.

Thinning changes it too.

The real work of public-land management is deciding which change is acceptable, how much risk is justified, when an action should occur, what evidence supports it, and how the decision will change if new information points somewhere else.

That is why this case belongs as much in Policy & Management as it does in Wildlife .

The ruling stops the old approval. It does not necessarily end the project.

The October 2024 Decision Memo can no longer support the unfinished work.

But the Forest Service can return to the project, reconsider it using the completed biological opinion, and make another decision.

That could lead to stronger seasonal restrictions. It could change how the remaining acres are treated. Or the agency could conclude, after completing the required process, that essentially the same management action remains appropriate. [1]

The next decision may tell us more about this case than the court ruling alone.

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