News & Updates

A federal judge in Wyoming today affirmed the Biden administration’s authority to not hold oil and gas lease sales in early 2021. The judge further found that industry groups lacked standing to challenge those lease sale postponements. The Wyoming court rejected...

Today, environmental and community groups sent letters to President Biden and Congressional leaders in the aftermath of the Inflation Reduction Act becoming U.S. law. The letter to President Biden urges him to use the regulatory tools at his disposal to center public...

The Western Environmental Law Center is delighted to congratulate board member Cliff Villa on his appointment as a senior advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Land and Emergency Management. Professor Villa has built a career fighting for...

Conservation groups have formally petitioned the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to revoke Signal Peak Energy’s permit for the Bull Mountains Mine north of Billings. Montana Environmental Information Center, Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, Northern...

Today, President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, a long-awaited bill with transformative climate, energy, and environmental provisions. Research group Energy Innovation estimates that for every ton of carbon this bill adds to the atmosphere, the...

Conservation groups and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management have finalized a legal agreement that will prevent new oil and gas leasing across 2.2 million acres of southwestern Colorado until the agency supplements its environmental analysis and releases an amended plan...

Today, a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overruled the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), re-establishing California’s right to protect water quality in the Yuba, Bear, and Merced River Watersheds for the next 40 years....

A federal judge late yesterday struck down two U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resource management plans that failed to address the public health consequences of allowing massive amounts of coal, oil, and gas production from public lands and minerals in the...

The Inflation Reduction Act is potentially transformative climate and energy legislation. Yet the bill contains several bitter pills for communities and groups that have spent years challenging the extraction of fossil fuels on federal public lands. Now, details have...

Today, old-growth forest and wildlife advocates provided the U.S. Forest Service the means to reconsider the pending Trump-era “Flat Country” timber sale in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest. The vast majority of the proposed logging would be in mature and...