A lawsuit aimed at halting experimental field trials of genetically modified (GM) trees was tossed out of a US federal court in October, marking the government's first win in a series of similar cases brought by conservation groups. The US District Court for the Southern District of Florida rejected conservation groups' claims that the federal government had failed to adequately review the environmental risks of planting GM cold-tolerant eucalyptus trees before issuing permits for field trials. Tree developer ArborGen in Summerville, South Carolina, gained permits to test the cold-tolerant trees modified to express the C-repeat binding factor (CBF) gene taken from Arabidopsis, on 28 sites in seven southern states and allow flowering on 27 of those sites. The conservation groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, say they are concerned that the trees will become invasive due to gene flow and seeds escaping the sites, and that eucalyptus plantations will deplete groundwater and make environments inhospitable for native flora and fauna. The groups alleged that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) failed to follow statutory procedures for considering the ecological risks. The court, however, found that USDA had fulfilled its regulatory duties outlined in the National Environmental Policy Act. Other environmental assessments performed by the agency—GM glyphosate-tolerant sugar beets and alfalfa—were both found to be deficient by a federal court in 2009 and 2007, respectively. “The eucalyptus decision is a significant reversal for the plaintiffs, given what happened in the sugar beets and alfalfa cases,” says Jay Johnson, an attorney with Dorsey & Whitney in Washington, DC. The case may help shift the momentum in the government's favor in future lawsuits likely to be brought by the conservation groups, Johnson says.