News & Updates

Yesterday, as record-setting heat threatened the sustainability of Washington’s water resources, a three-judge panel of the Washington Court of Appeals unanimously invalidated the Washington State Department of Ecology’s (“Ecology’s”) waste discharge permits for...

A federal district court yesterday rejected crucial aspects of the revised forest plan for the Flathead National Forest in northwest Montana for failing to adequately assess conservation needs for threatened grizzly bears and bull trout. Specifically, the court...

Today, the US House of Representatives passed (229 to 191) a resolution that would reinstate the Environmental Protection Agency's 2016 methane pollution safeguards for the oil and gas industry. The Senate passed a similar resolution in April. Methane, the primary...

Climate, indigenous and conservation groups today called on the Biden administration to halt new drilling permits and to cancel unlawful Trump-era oil and gas leases on public lands. The letter urges the Interior Department to enact a range of interim actions to...

Six years after attorneys filed the landmark constitutional climate change case Juliana v. United States – and just days before settlement talks were scheduled between the youth plaintiffs and the government – attorneys general from 17 states, including Montana, have...

The New Mexico State Land Office released a report today enumerating the degree to which New Mexico’s oil and gas industry has failed to assure payment for its responsibilities to plug and reclaim wells and other industry sites: a staggering gap of $8.1 billion. The...

New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich is soon expected to introduce the Schools and State Budgets Certainty Act of 2021. The Act would stabilize state, county, and Tribal revenues from oil and gas production on federal public lands to provide time to transition budgets...

Conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service's 2020 approval of a plan that allows fracking across 35,000 acres of Colorado’s Western Slope. The North Fork Mancos Master Development Plan allows 35 new...

Today, the New Mexico Environment Department proposed new rules to limit emissions from oil and gas operations in the state by requiring companies to detect and repair leaks as well as control other pollution sources. The new rules aim to elevate New Mexico’s position...

On the same day as the Trump administration announced the elimination of 3.4 million acres of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s top owl expert formally objected to the decision in a document recently unearthed as part...