Cite as 386 F.3d 1169 (9th Cir. 2004)
4. NEPA
NEPA requires that an environmental impact statement (“EIS”) be prepared for “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment….” 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C). As is true of the MMPA, no provision of NEPA explicitly grants any person or entity standing to enforce the statute, but judicial enforcement of NEPA rights is available through the APA. Lujan, 497 U.S. at 882, 110 S.Ct. 3177. Interpreting NEPA broadly, we have recognized standing for individuals and groups of individuals who sue to require preparation of an EIS, when they contend that a challenged federal action will adversely affect the environment. See, e.g., Ocean Advocates, 361 F.3d at 1121; Laub v. U.S. Dept. of Interior, 342 F.3d 1080, 1086 (9th Cir.2003); Citizens for Better Forestry v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 341 F.3d 961, 976 (9th Cir.2003). However, we see nothing in either NEPA or the APA that would permit us to hold that animals who are part of the environment have standing to bring suit on their own behalf.
5. Associational Standing
The Cetaceans argue that even if individual cetaceans do not have standing, their group has standing as an “association” under the APA, 5 U.S.C. § 551(2) (defining “person” to include an “association”). We disagree. A generic requirement for associational standing is that an association’s “members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right.” Laidlaw, 528 U.S. at 181, 120 S.Ct. 693. discussed above, individual animals do not have standing to sue under the ESA, the MMPA, NEPA and the APA. Nor can the Cetaceans establish first-party organizational standing as an association under the APA. See Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 378–79, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982) (association had standing as “person” in its own right under the Fair Housing Act); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 511, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) (recognizing that an organization may sue on its own behalf for injuries it has sustained); Fair Housing of Marin v. Combs, 285 F.3d 899, 904 (9th Cir.2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1018, 123 S.Ct. 536, 154 L.Ed.2d 425 (2002) (following Havens). The complaint presents no evidence that the Cetaceans comprise a formal association, nor can we read into the term “association” in the APA a desire by Congress to confer standing on a non-human species as a group, any more than we can read into the term “person” Congressional intent to confer standing on individual animals. See Black’s Law Dictionary 132 (8th ed.2004) (defining “association” as “[a] gathering of people for a common purpose; the persons so joined”).
Conclusion
We agree with the district court in Citizens to End Animal Suffering & Exploitation, Inc., that “[i]f Congress and the President intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue, they could, and should, have said so plainly.” 836 F.Supp. at 49. In the absence of any such statement in the ESA, the MMPA, or NEPA, or the APA, we conclude that the Cetaceans do not have statutory standing to sue.
AFFIRMED.
