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. ...
Court rejects government attempt to toss Colosi’s challenge to exactions scheme
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, farmer and horse racer
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 ...
Army Corps keeps ignoring the Supreme Court, trapping property owners in a regulatory maze
When Teancum Properties wanted to develop their 22-acre Utah parcel, they did everything right. The construction and development company hired environmental consultants, studied federal regulations, and filed the proper paperwork with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Yet despite their diligence, they found themselves trapped in a bureaucratic nigh ...
American Bar Association : Environmental law in the 2024-25 Supreme Court term
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 ...
What I saw (and didn’t see) at last week’s Abundance Conference
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 ...
The Wall Street Journal highlights a family’s fight to protect their lumber business
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 ...
The Orange County Register : How environmental laws are killing America’s housing supply
Over the past 50 years, the population of the United States has ballooned from 210 million to 340 million. And yet we are building far fewer homes than we were a half-century ago. In 1973, over two million homes and apartments were built compared to only 1.4 million in 2023. Economists estimate that nationally, we need five million more homes. And ...
Court victory restores property rights for Alabama landowners
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 ...