News & Updates

Today, the Oregon Senate voted to pass HB 3932A to tap into nature’s free waterway restoration service and the state animal: the American beaver. Once Gov. Kotek signs the bill into law, it will close beaver hunting and trapping on public lands waterways that the...

The president of the United States has deployed the military against Californians in a divisive, unjustified, and unprecedented action. He has also threatened the use of “heavy force” against Americans who protest a military parade in Washington, D.C., on June...

The Department of Interior today announced the approval of an approximately 50-million-ton expansion of the notorious Bull Mountains Underground Coal Mine near Roundup, Montana. The Trump administration approved the expansion without a draft environmental impact...

Today, wildlife advocates challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) in federal court for denying Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for the Sonoran desert tortoise in 2022. The Desert Tortoise Council, Tucson Herpetological Society, Western...

Conservation groups intervened today in a lawsuit brought by the timber industry and counties seeking to strip northern spotted owls of protections for their critical habitat across millions of acres of forests in California, Oregon and Washington. The industry...

Today, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and The Conservation Angler, represented by attorneys at the Western Environmental Law Center, notified Tacoma Power the groups intend to challenge in court the utility’s failure to provide safe and effective downstream passage past...

The New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission (WQCC) today adopted a rule that prohibits the discharge of “produced water” to New Mexico’s ground and surface waters. Produced water is a waste byproduct of oil and gas operations and contains hundreds of known and...

Oregon and Washington released the results of state wolf surveys for 2024 this week, presenting a contrast in how the species is recovering in the Pacific Northwest. In Oregon, wolf population increased 14% in 2024 over 2023 levels while in Washington, wolf population...

New Mexico community groups today express their strong support for the revival of a 2023 bill backed by the state’s entire Congressional delegation to codify into law a 10-mile buffer zone restricting new oil and gas extraction around Chaco Culture National Historical...

Rule would allow dangerous exception for “pilot projects” to discharge 84,000 gallons per day of treated fossil fuel waste to groundwater, risking public health   Following a day and a half of deliberations, the Water Quality Control Commission is poised to adopt...