In Skipper v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 796. F. Supp. 3d 996 (S.D. Ala. 2025), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama partially vacated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (“FWS”) critical habitat designation for the black pinesnake, offering guidance on how agencies must justify occupied habitats and evaluate economic impacts under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”).

The plaintiffs were private timberland owners whose property in Clarke County, Alabama fell within Units 7 and 8 of the black pinesnake’s designated critical habitat. The plaintiffs challenged the designation under the ESA, the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), and the Regulatory Flexibility Act (“RFA”), alleging the rule depressed property value, imposed additional regulatory burdens, and was not supported by the administrative record. The Court found the plaintiffs had Article III standing because the designation created concrete economic injury and regulatory risk traceable to the FWS rule, and that vacatur limited to their units would redress those harms.

The Court held the FWS acted arbitrarily and capriciously in treating Units 7 and 8 as “occupied” critical habitats at the time of listing. The FWS relied on decades-old, anecdotal sightings on the periphery of the units and the presence of suitable habitats but had no recent observational data and no survey evidence confirming the snake’s presence on the plaintiffs’ property. The Court reasoned that occupied habitats under the ESA must be an area where the species is actually present or at least routinely present, and the FWS improperly conflated suitable habitats with occupied habitats when it extrapolated sparse sightings to thousands of acres of land.

The Court also rejected the FWS’s baseline economic analysis under ESA § 4(b)(2). Adopting the Tenth Circuit’s co-extensive approach, the Court held the FWS must consider all economic effects of a critical habitat designation, including those that overlap with the listing decision, in order to meaningfully weight the costs and benefits of including particular areas. The Court faulted the FWS for acknowledging potential losses from negative public perception and reduced property values but failing to quantify or analyze the impacts due to data limitations.

Although the Court upheld FWS’s RFA certification, it concluded that the multiple deficiencies in the occupancy and economic analyses required more than a simple remand. Applying the APA’s set aside remedy, the Court vacated the final rule as to Units 7 and 8 only and remanded to FWS for further proceedings, leaving the remainder of the black pinesnake critical habitat designation in place. The decision sends a clear signal that the FWS must carefully distinguish between occupied and merely suitable habitats and must meaningfully evaluate the economic consequences of designating private land as critical habitat. For landowners, Skipper provides a roadmap for challenging habitat designations that rely on thin biological support or incomplete economic analysis.