This two-part series examines legislation in Congress that would reform the infamous Mining Law of 1872. Part 1 focused on how mining on public lands should be administered in the twenty-first century. Part 2 focuses on pending legislation the conservation areas in which mining should be permanently banned.

This two-part series examines legislation in Congress that would reform the infamous Mining Law of 1872. Part 1 focuses on how mining on public lands should be administered in the twenty-first century. Part 2 will focus on the pending legislation and conservation areas in which mining should be permanently banned.

Congress authorized the establishment of Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) in Marin County, California. At the time, the acute threat was sprawling subdivisions, while the chronic threat to public recreation, benefit, and inspiration was industrial dairies and the grazing of beef and dairy cattle. It still is.

America’s public lands are often in need of a good lawyer, and they have one in John Leshy. He has served America’s public lands (and its owners) as an academic, author, and advocate. In his long career, he’s published legal textbooks, written briefs, argued cases, and taught law students, and he was the top lawyer in the U.S. Department of the Interior for almost as long as Bruce Babbitt was secretary of the interior.

The Oregon Wildlands Act is now the law of the land. Neither the Rogue Canyon National Recreation Area (98,150 acres), nor the Molalla National Recreation Area (~29,884 acres), as well as the Wild Rogue Wilderness Additions (~59,512) acres was included in the final version signed by President Trump.

Late in December 2018, during the lame-duck session of the 115th Congress, a deal was almost struck to move an omnibus public lands package of legislation. The package compiled specific bills that were legislatively ready to advance. Some of the bills in the package were quite good, others quite bad.

The American Prairie Reserve is big, bold, beautiful, and outside the box. It is being assembled by the eponymous conservation organization in a generally inside-the-box way. The organization is buying ranches from willing sellers and continuing to pay the property taxes. It is continuing to lease state and federal lands for grazing and paying the grazing fees.

There is white liberal guilt aplenty about the treatment of Native Americans in Oregon (and rightfully so). The Democrats who supported this legislation came down on the side of Native Americans and, in this case, against nature. As for the Republicans who supported the bill, it was more a matter of it being a politically elegant way to effectively privatize the lands.

The Forest Service is proposing to mechanically push over at least thirty perfectly healthy and very tall and very large old-growth Douglas-fir trees into the uppermost Calapooia River, in the name of steelhead habitat enhancement. So-called tree-tipping is purported by some fish biologists to be helpful and by other experts to be harmful—or at best to be a distraction from getting the real restoration work done.

We live in a polarized nation divided between rural and urban with the suburbs and exurbs swinging toward the Democrats, allowing that party to retake the House.

As public forestlands in the West cover more area than private timberlands, most of the smoke that plagued the Rogue Valley this summer came from public lands on fire. This might lead one to think that more logging on federal public lands would help, but one would be wrong.

In August 2017, President Trump announced his intent to “enhance and modernize” the NEPA regulations, and CEQ responded with a list of actions the following month

The National Environmental Policy Act was enacted into law in 1970. It was signed by President Richard Nixon, who knew a political bandwagon when he saw it and knew that a veto would be overridden.

In order to provide for the ever-increasing outdoor recreation needs of an expanding population and in order to promote the preservation of, public access to, travel within, and enjoyment and appreciation of the open-air, outdoor areas and historic resources of the Nation, trails should be established.

Climate change is an existential threat to the human species. The rapid decarbonization of the economy of the United States and of the world is our only chance of maintaining the climate that we generally know and love.

This is second of two parts. Part 2 explains that public lands conservationists must rely more Congress enacting good legislation to achieve our goals.

This is part one of two parts. Part 1 examines how the courts are changing and public lands conservationists must rely less on litigation to achieve our goals.

For the most part, these bills are popular and uncontroversial, and when they do get to the floor they will pass. When that happens and the congressional pipeline finally does unclog, conservationists need to make sure that pipeline is full.

This is the second part of a two-part series on the threat of new oil and gas exploitation off the coasts of the United States. The first part outlined the Trump administration’s draft proposal and answered five key questions about what the impacts of the proposed development might be.

This is the first part of a two-part series on the threat of new oil and gas exploitation off the coasts of the United States. This first part outlines the Trump administration’s draft proposal and answers five key questions about what the impacts of the proposed development might be.