Articles

PLF filed a fresh lawsuit today on the heels of our latest Supreme Court victory. Last week, in Weyerhaeuser v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, a unanimous Supreme Court reaffirmed that agencies are not immune from judicial review of their actions. This wasn’t just a win for PLF and our clients: it was also … ...

In 2013, several environmental activist groups launched a lawsuit to expand the criminal reach of the Endangered Species Act. They challenged the United States’ longstanding interpretation of the statutes, which makes it a crime to “knowingly” “take” a protected species, to require defendants know their actions will ca ...

Thanks to a lawsuit filed by PLF, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service yesterday issued a proposed rule to remove outdated and counterproductive regulations that hurt golden parakeet conservation efforts by creating unnecessary red tape for U.S. bird breeders. The federal government classified the golden parakeet (also known as the golden conure or Q ...

Ok, that’s a slight overstatement. But not as much of one as you would think. Activist group WildEarth Guardians apparently dreams of a world in which people can be thrown in federal prison if they accidentally hit the wrong rodent scurrying across a dark highway, disturb the wrong insect while building a tree house, or … ...

This week, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) published The Road to Recovery: How restoring the Endangered Species Act’s two-step process can prevent extinction and promote recovery. In that report, I explain how returning to Congress’ original design for the Endangered Species Act—according to which the statute&# ...

For decades, a federal agency had forbidden people in southwestern Utah from doing things that most of us take for granted in our own communities, like building homes, starting businesses, or protecting their airport, playgrounds, and cemetery from disruption, all ostensibly to protect the Utah prairie dog. Thanks to a lawsuit PLF filed on behalf ...

In the 80s, Congress enacted a statute authorizing the Service to move otters to southern California on the condition that it implement protections for the surrounding fishery and the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on it, including requirements that the Service exclude otters from parts of the fishery and exempt fishermen from criminal prosecut ...

Before making a decision, most organizations take into account the costs and benefits of a proposed action, and will change course if the costs outweigh the benefits. Unfortunately, the federal government takes a different approach… … ...

When the Service rejected a delisting petition for the coastal California gnatcatcher, it acknowledged that it was not going to define “subspecies,” the very term upon which the denial rests, even while acknowledging that the term enjoys no commonly accepted meaning among scientists. Thus, by not defining that key term, the Service effe ...