Articles

PLF joins Montanans’ private property fight against federal government This week, in Wilkins v. United States of America, PLF took over as lead attorneys for two Montana property owners who are suing the federal government. Wil Wilkins and Jane Stanton live next to the Bitterroot National Forest and have a road across their land, the … ...

When the government negotiates for a limited-access easement across your property, it cannot turn around later and decide it has an unlimited right to cross your property. Wil Wilkins and Jane Stanton, two Montana landowners, have had to sue the U.S. Forest Service to prevent it from pulling exactly that kind of bait-and-switch. This week, … ...

Yesterday, we filed our final trial court briefs in Granat v. USDA, PLF’s challenge to the Forest Service’s mass road and trail closure on the Plumas National Forest in northeastern California.  Our case focuses on the agency’s decision to close to all motor vehicle access nearly 700 miles of existing, legally authorized roads ...

On Monday of this week, I presented at oral argument at the 9th Circuit in our challenge to the Forest Service’s closure of over 90% of the historical user-created motorized routes in Tahoe National Forest.  The Forest Service closed the routes without complying with the requirements for alternatives analysis, which is the heart of the env ...

We have written (and litigated) at length about the errors of the United States Forest Service, whether that be on forest access, ongoing water rights infringements, or the fire risk that the agency is imposing on its neighboring land owners. So, when the agency does something right, however small, we are obliged to acknowledge it. Last … ...

If you thought 23,000 pages would be sufficient to document a federal government action closing roads and trails in a national forest, you’d be wrong.  That’s the number of pages it took the Forest Service to “summarize” its action to close routes in California’s Plumas National Forest to off-roaders.  Most ...

Smokey the Bear isn’t telling the whole story — you’re not the only one who can prevent wildfires. The National Forest Service can help, too. But if environmentalists have their way, the Service’s fire prevention efforts will suffer. … ...

Last month, the Forest Service proposed a regulation that would require permits costing as much as $1500 to take photographs or film on Forest Service land. The public response has been overwhelmingly negative I tried but couldn’t make the sentence long enough for all the criticism…. To put this simply enough that a Forest Service R ...

Contract rights — adverse New Mexico decision The New Mexico Supreme Court issued this adverse decision in First Baptist Church of Roswell v. Yates Petroleum.  Here, the church entered into a standard contract with Yates, which specified that until the church provided proof of ownership, no interest would accrue on the royalties.  The churc ...