Articles

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 ...

This week, business groups, associations, think tanks, and government entities all filed “friends of the court” amicus briefs supporting PLF in its high-profile Supreme Court case for property owners’ rights, Markle v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All thirteen of the amicus briefs, representing 19 different organizations and ...

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the final rule to downlist the manatee from endangered to threatened. This comes in response to a nearly five-year battle with PLF to get the federal government to follow its own experts’ advice and the law, and downlist the manatee. But the roots of today’s decision go … ...

For nine years PLF has been petitioning and suing the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove a small Texas bird from the endangered species list, based on the Service’s own internal recommendation to that effect. Today the Service finally announced its intent to delist the Black-capped Vireo under the Endangered Species Act. And while the ̷ ...

The manatee population continues to grow in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s newest survey results. Each winter, when weather conditions permit, the FWC conducts an aerial survey with a team of observers who fly around the state’s warmer waters where manatees typically congregate. Last year, the FWC count ...

On December 7, 2015, with much self-congratulatory horn-tooting, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would issuing a final rule removing the Modoc sucker from the list of threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. The Service’s press release describes the action as a success for the Service’s program ...

Earlier this week, a coalition of “corporate”** environmental groups sought leave to file a supplemental complaint in NRDC v. Jewell, to challenge the Bureau of Reclamation’s water allocations to Sacramento River water users.  The nub of this case—which has been going on for a decade—is the environmentalists’ o ...

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced its plan to publish a 90-day finding acknowledging that the petition we filed on behalf of Save Crystal River presents substantial scientific evidence that warrants further review. Our arm-twisting has paid off. We filed a lawsuit a couple of months ago to compel the government to pay … ...

Earlier this week, several parties in the Consolidated Smelt Cases (the Department of Water Resources, the State Water Contractors, and the Federal Water Contractors) filed petitions for rehearing before the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  (The court has already asked for a response from the federal agencies and their environmental group def ...