Advancing Abundance and Prosperity Through Freedom and Ingenuity
At Pacific Legal Foundation, we believe people are the ultimate resource. Our Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) practice roots itself in the conviction that when human creativity is unleashed through liberty, it solves problems and expands the world’s potential. The future isn’t built on fear or control—it’s built on freedom and innovation.
Our mission: Defend the freedom to use both public and private land productively, protect constitutional limits on government power, and promote abundance through responsible innovation. We litigate, research, and advocate not to constrain an individual’s use of the land, but to liberate that use through law. We will transform environment and natural resource law from a tool of restriction into a platform for prosperity.
We set out our vision in three ambitious, core goals:
Unleash Human Ingenuity to Build, Grow, and Flourish
At PLF, we reject the zero-sum view of environmentalism—the belief that protecting nature requires restraining people. Instead, we fight government restrictions that prevent individuals and communities from improving their land, their resources, and their lives—whether through farming, forestry, or energy development.
Across the country, outdated laws and overreaching agencies block productive activity with red tape, vague definitions, and ever-expanding mandates. Bureaucrats treat productive land use as a threat to be controlled, rather than as the source of environmental and economic progress.
We challenge this mindset in court. From battling unlawful wetlands designations to dismantling permitting regimes that make land improvement nearly impossible, we aim to restore the freedom to solve problems—not just comply with static regulations. Our goal is simple: Defend the right of people to shape the future through work, enterprise, and stewardship.
Defend the Right to Use Property as the Engine of Prosperity and Problem-Solving
Property rights are the foundation of innovation, sustainability, and opportunity. They are not merely legal entitlements—they’re the framework through which people create value, steward resources, and pass opportunity to future generations.
Yet in the name of environmental protection, property rights are under siege. Whether it’s forced conservation easements, disproportionate mitigation demands, or sweeping regulatory classifications, landowners face ideological and often-arbitrary barriers to putting their land to good use.
We are on the front lines of defending the right of the individual to use property as a core environmental value. In the wake of our victory in Sackett v. EPA, which reined in federal wetlands jurisdiction, we are pushing to ensure that local, state, and federal governments cannot use vague laws to seize control of land without due process or compensation. We are also revitalizing legal doctrines like Nollan and Dolan—which prevent the government from attaching unfair conditions to building permits—to ensure that environmental land use permit approvals aren’t used as leverage to extract property or concessions without constitutional justification.
Every case we take up reinforces a simple truth: When people have secure property rights, they invest in the land, care for it, and make it better—for themselves and for others.
Transform Environmental Law from a Tool of Scarcity to a Platform for Abundance
Modern environmental law too often assumes that human activity is inherently harmful—that the best way to protect the planet is to slow down growth, limit resource use, and constrain development. This scarcity mindset is not only wrong—it’s counterproductive.
We work to reorient environmental law around abundance. The proper goal of environmental policy isn’t to stop people from using natural resources—it’s to ensure they can do so responsibly, innovatively, and sustainably.
We litigate to bring environmental law back to its original purpose: Creating conditions for long-term prosperity. That means challenging federal agencies when they exceed their authority, holding them to statutory limits, and ensuring that environmental reviews are grounded in reason—not ideology. It also means advocating for reforms to laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which are too often used to obstruct rather than inform.
Environmental challenges are real—but so is human ingenuity. People use science, technology, and creativity to clean water, reclaim land, grow more food, and produce more energy with less waste. We believe environmental law should empower, not restrict, those solutions.
Grounded in Law, Focused on People
What sets PLF’s Environment and Natural Resources practice apart is our commitment to principle and pragmatism. We’re not trying to win narrow regulatory fights—we’re building a movement to reshape how Americans think about law, land, and liberty. Our team combines top-tier legal expertise with strategic research, policy, and scholarship.
Our clients include farmers working the land, foresters preserving ecosystems, outdoors men and women exploring our wilderness, and energy innovators building for the future. We represent those who don’t just talk about sustainability—they live it. And we fight for them when outdated rules and power-hungry agencies stand in the way.
Whether we’re challenging government overreach in a courtroom, filing amicus briefs at the Supreme Court, or collaborating with allies to draft model legislation, we are driven by the belief that human potential, when protected by freedom, is the most powerful force for good the world has ever known.
Why It Matters
This work isn’t just about winning cases. It’s about reclaiming the moral high ground.
Environmentalism should not be synonymous with restrictions, pessimism, and bureaucratic control. It should be about hope, progress, and the belief that people—free to act, innovate, and own—are not the enemy of nature, but its greatest ally.
We want to restore a moral and legal framework where land is not locked away, but activated; where science is not manipulated, but applied; and where law is not an obstacle, but a tool of empowerment.
At PLF, we’re not afraid to challenge entrenched assumptions. We’ve taken on the federal government, state agencies, and powerful environmental lobbies—and we’ve won. But we don’t measure success by the number of regulations overturned. We measure it by what our clients can build, grow, and achieve once they are free.
Join Us
If you believe that a better world is possible through liberty, responsibility, and the genius of the human mind, we invite you to stand with us. At Pacific Legal Foundation, we’re not just defending rights—we’re expanding horizons.
Let’s build an environmental future rooted not in fear, but in freedom.
