News & Updates

Today, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland issued two secretarial orders to chart a course for the department’s future—a future animated by the imperative to take climate action, honor commitments to Indigenous peoples, and invest in a clean energy future. In so doing, the...

Hundreds of Native American, religious, business and conservation organizations today called on the Biden administration to do a comprehensive environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws to align federal fossil fuel programs with...

A federal judge late last Friday approved the Bureau of Land Management’s request to rescind the Grand Junction resource management plan following a lawsuit by environmental groups challenging the agency’s failure to analyze its potential harm to the climate. The...

Today, the New Mexico Oil Conservation Commission (OCC) finalized a new rule proposed by the state’s Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) to limit venting and flaring of methane by the oil and gas industry. The OCC rule marks an important step...

Today, a coalition of scientists and conservationists challenged in federal court a U.S. Forest Service plan to build a road through the Pumice Plain, the blast zone of Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, to assess the integrity of a natural dam on Spirit...

The Western Environmental Law Center is appalled at the murder in Atlanta of one man and seven women, six of them Asian-American. This case appears clearly motivated by anti-Asian racism and misogyny. The case also appears clearly fueled by anti-Asian slurs from...

The Western Environmental Law Center offers heartfelt congratulations to board member Daniel Cordalis, who has been chosen to be Deputy Solicitor of Water at the U.S. Department of the Interior. He will step down from the WELC board of directors. We are sorry to lose...

Today, Friends of the Clearwater (FOC) filed a lawsuit to protect sensitive wildlife habitat in the proposed Great Burn Wilderness, which the Forest Service recommended for Congress to designate as wilderness in 1987. The suit seeks to protect Fish Lake from motorized...

A federal court late yesterday ruled against a massive Montana coal mine expansion, finding the federal government inappropriately ignored the climate, environmental, and health consequences of more mining. In a rebuke of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, Judge Susan...