Environment and Natural Resources

The First Amendment protects more than our right to criticize our leaders. It also protects our livelihoods, and sometimes even our very lives. A case scheduled to be heard next week before the Supreme Court may decide whether the government can shut off that lifeline. The Court should side with freedom. Free speech saved Jun Abell's life. At 18 ...

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. ...

A federal judge ruled yesterday that Michael Colosi's lawsuit against Charlotte County, Florida, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will proceed, rejecting efforts by both the county and the federal government to have the case dismissed. The decision, issued by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, keeps alive Colosi ...

John Harris, longtime Pacific Legal Foundation trustee and former board chair, passed away this summer at the age of 81. This article is reprinted here from PLF's quarterly magazine Sword&Scales. Midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, off I-5 on the Western edge of the San Joaquin Valley, sits Harris Farms and Harris Ranch—a spread ...

This article originally appeared in the American Bar Association's Supreme Court Preview. During the 2024-25 term, the Supreme Court squarely addressed environmental statutes in two important cases. One is a blockbuster that aims to rein in judicial review under the National Environmental Protection Act. In the other, the Court established a nov ...

At the Abundance Conference last week in Washington, D.C., what I saw was something rare in today's politics: nonpartisan optimism. People from different backgrounds and perspectives came together not to trade insults or score partisan points, but to share ideas about how to make America more prosperous. Just as important, what I did not see was tr ...

Thirty-one years ago, Kirk Dahlstrom rolled the dice on a bankrupt sawmill in Southeastern Alaska. Joined by a few family members and a lifelong friend, Kirk moved his wife and children to Prince of Wales Island to chase his American Dream and launch Viking Lumber. Today, Viking Lumber provides wood to some of the largest and most prominent i ...

For generations, Alabama's Skipper family has managed their forests with care—only to find themselves branded as stewards of an endangered snake habitat that no one could prove actually existed. This week, a federal judge handed the family a decisive victory, ruling that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had overreached when it declared mor ...

The other side of the pond dropped into a brief but sobering relapse into the dark ages. Spain and Portugal suffered a massive electricity shortage in April, plunging them into darkness. It is no coincidence that this occurred only days after the country announced that so-called renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro) had supplied all the country' ...