Articles

In recent decades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has spent countless time, money, and effort over a creature known as the southern Selkirk Mountain caribou.  The Selkirk caribou was listed as an endangered species in 1984, and its habitat includes portions of Idaho, Washington, and southern British Columbia.  The Selkirk caribou is not a &# ...

PLF attorneys filed a federal lawsuit in Idaho today because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to respond to a petition that asks the agency to remove the Southern Selkirk Mountain Caribou Population from the endangered species list.  PLF submitted the petition last May on behalf of Bonner County and the Idaho State Snowmobile … ...

Environment — Endangered Caribou The United States Fish & Wildlife Service announced a drastic (and well-justified) reduction in critical habitat for the Selkirk Caribou from 375,000 to approximately 30,000 acres, based largely on the fact that the caribou do not live in lower elevations in Idaho as originally assumed. We still, however, ...

Today we learned that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue a positive initial finding on our petition to remove the Southern Selkirk Mountain Caribou Population from the endangered species list.  We filed our petition in May.  It argues that the Selkirk caribou population, which sometimes roams in the Idaho panhandle and the northeastern ...

PLF attorneys, once again, filed a federal lawsuit in Idaho today because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to properly respond to a petition that asks the agency to remove the Southern Selkirk Mountain Caribou Population from the endangered species list. The Endangered Species Act requires the Service to respond to petitions in two stages ...

At long last, and after multiple rounds of litigation, the Service has withdrawn and replaced the listing of the Southern Selkirk Mountain population of caribou, a species that includes reindeer I hope Santa has a good ESA lawyer!. As a consequence of today’s decision, the listed population will be broadened and downlisted from endangered to ...

This week, PLF filed a comment letter on behalf of Bonner County and the Idaho State Snowmobile Association addressing the proposed downlisting of the caribou. The impetus for the Service’s decision was a petition that PLF filed two years ago explaining that the original listing violated the Endangered Species Act. PLF had to file not … ...

Tort Reform — Victories in California Supreme Court We received a couple of nice decisions this week from the California Supreme Court.  First, there was this decision in Verdugo v. Target, the case where the widow of a  heart-attack victim, who died while shopping at Target, alleged that Target had a duty to provide an automated … ...

“Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns.  Imagine if we did something different.”  That wasn’t John Lennon speaking from the grave, it was the President delivering his State of the Union.  And he even continued, “I commit to every Republican here tonight that I will not only seek out your ideas, I … ...