News & Updates

Late yesterday, the Arizona District Court in Phoenix approved a legal agreement requiring the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to re-examine its decision to allow target shooting in 90% of Sonoran Desert National Monument, a quiet oasis of saguaro cacti, native desert...

Today on Earth Day, President Biden announced his administration would consider a path to ending logging of late-successional and old-growth forests on public lands. The Western Environmental Law Center, an organization that has worked since its founding in 1993...

Today, in a necessary first step, the Biden administration’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) finalized Phase One rulemaking for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), restoring some protections removed by the previous administration. However, many...

The Bureau of Land Management announced today it will resume oil and gas leasing on public lands, violating Biden’s campaign promise to end new oil and gas leasing and locking in new extraction that thwarts his pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite its...

Conservation, public health, and community leaders from across New Mexico today applauded the Environmental Improvement Board’s (EIB) preliminary approval of final ozone precursor regulations for oil and gas production and processing. This includes nation-leading...

Today, the Supreme Court of the U.S. used its emergency docket to revive a Trump Administration Clean Water Act rule that sidelined states, Tribes, and the public in permitting decisions for large projects affecting water. SCOTUS provided no reasoning for its decision...

In response to legal action from a coalition of organizations, the Biden administration today agreed to review the Trump administration’s illegal approval of fracking on nearly 45,000 acres—70 square miles—of the Greater Chaco region of northwest New Mexico and to...

A coalition of conservation groups has reached an agreement with the operators of the Electron hydroelectric project on the Puyallup River to preserve safeguards for threatened Chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout. The groups had sued over the facility’s illegal...

Climate and conservation groups sued the U.S. Interior Department on Friday for failing to release public records, including documents behind the development of a federal oil and gas leasing report, related to President Biden’s 2021 executive order to address climate...