We filed a motion in U.S. District Court requesting a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order to stop ConocoPhillips from starting harmful winter road construction and gravel mining in the western Arctic because of immediate threats to people and wildlife. It also challenges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s failure to ensure impacts to polar bears will be mitigated.… Read More

We sprinted to court this week to stop the outgoing administration from selling off sacred and public lands in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge during the last days of its term.
The motion requests a preliminary injunction that stops the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from issuing any leases and from authorizing any seismic exploration activities.… Read More

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced today that it will issue a notice of lease sale of lands in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge next week, just one day after the 60th anniversary of establishment of the Arctic Refuge. … Read More

We’re taking the Interior Department, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to court for unlawfully and prematurely authorizing the ConocoPhillips Willow Master Plan despite its known harms to people and wildlife. BLM approved the Willow proposal in late October, despite the lack of a permit application and despite serious concerns from the public about the agency rushing the public process during a pandemic. … Read More

The National Environmental Policy Act, affectionately called NEPA in the alphabet soup of environmental law, is the cornerstone law that requires the federal government to look at the environmental, economic, social, and health impacts of any decision that might impact the environment. 
It applies to federal permitting decisions like those related to logging, mining, transportation, oil and gas extraction, and infrastructure like pipelines. It also applies to consequential multi-year land management plans that can set out how federal lands may be subjected to extractive projects. 

Most important, it gives local people and the public generally the chance to participate in the federal decision-making process to convey their concerns, knowledge, approval, and disapproval.… Read More

Our office manager Ashley Boyd talks about how ranch life taught her that to love and respect the land is to protect it. As a kid of 6 or 7, I went to my uncle’s ranch in West Texas and … Read More

Our August lawsuits charge Interior and federal agencies with derailing public input, denying and ignoring science, and plowing over human rights and local voices to give away sacred and public lands, and allow the devastation of wildlife and wildlife habitat for political gains and corporate profits.… Read More

We went to court again—the second time this week–charging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management with advancing an illegal plan to sell off the nation’s largest unit of public land to oil companies. This effort to expand fossil fuel exploitation … Read More

The Gwich’in Steering Committee and allied groups took Interior to court today over a leasing program that would give the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil industry. The administration broke the law when trying to hand over sacred and public lands to international oil companies while disrespecting the human rights and lives that rely on this life-nourishing place. … Read More