2025 Advocates for the West Victories
3rd of Dec 2025
Sage-grouse and the Sagebrush Sea
We won a significant victory in our sweeping case challenging thousands of oil and gas leases in sage-grouse habitats. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the first Trump administration illegally approved hundreds of oil and gas leases on public lands in “Phase One” of our case, prohibited any further development of those leases, and laid down the law that the new Trump administration cannot make similar “energy dominance” policy changes on a whim.
California’s Point Reyes National Seashore
We reached a landmark agreement to protect and restore northern California’s Point Reyes National Seashore from harm caused by commercial dairy and ranching operations. The agreement prioritizes ecological protection, wildlife conservation, and continued recreational access. Owners of all dairies and nearly all cattle ranches at Point Reyes voluntarily agreed to end their operations and transition off the National Seashore in exchange for payment from The Nature Conservancy.
Instream Flows in Oregon’s Crooked River
The Crooked River is one of Oregon’s crown jewels, winding through Smith Rock State Park and providing habitat for redband trout and steelhead. We won an important victory to protect flows for fish and wildlife in the lower Crooked River when the Court rejected several ranchers’ attempt to invalidate a water right issued by the Oregon Water Resources Department. The water right at issue in this case, which Advocates for the West and our partners intervened to defend, is essential to ensure that flows in the lower Crooked River—all the way from Bowman Dam to Lake Billy Chinook—are protected for steelhead and other fish.
Bighorn Sheep in Colorado
We won a major victory for bighorn sheep conservation on the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the U.S. Forest Service unlawfully disregarded scientific findings and arbitrarily altered the findings of its disease “Risk of Contact” modeling when it approved domestic sheep grazing on the Wishbone Allotment near Creede, CO. The agency approved the creation of the Wishbone domestic sheep allotment in close proximity to bighorn sheep core habitats despite concluding in 2013 and 2015 that contact with domestic sheep posed a high level of disease risk to the area’s bighorn sheep populations.
Upper Willamette Salmon and Steelhead
We won a conclusive victory in our Oregon federal court case involving eight U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams and reservoirs in the Upper Willamette River basin that cause severe harm to Chinook salmon and steelhead by cutting off upstream spawning habitat and impairing downstream water quality and quantity. The Court issued final judgment affirming that many of the changes and actions we and our partners pursued are now part of a new long-term plan issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service that will govern dam and reservoir operations for decades to come.
Pollinators and Western Public Lands
In our challenge against the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) over the agency’s pesticide spraying on millions of acres in 17 western states to kill native grasshoppers, we won another important victory when the Court issued a final judgment confirming APHIS’s legal duty to consider preventative measures—rather than a “spray first, ask questions later” approach. The Court also held that APHIS failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of its spraying program and disclose that information to the public.
Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River Watershed
We won an interim victory in our ongoing fight to stop Perpetua Resources’ proposed Stibnite Gold Mine in Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River watershed, on the edge of Idaho’s Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness and within the homelands of the Nez Perce Tribe. In response to our appeal of a water quality permit issued for the proposed Stibnite Gold Mine due to its inadequacy to protect water quality in the South Fork Salmon River watershed, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality moved to pause proceedings to revisit the permit and address multiple shortcomings.
Columbia River Estuary and Local Farms
NEXT Renewable Fuels’ proposed refinery and railyard located adjacent to the Columbia River Estuary near Clatskanie, OR poses a significant environmental threat to the surrounding area and the river, polluting the air and water, negatively impacting local family farms, creating conditions for a catastrophic spill, and harming Endangered Species Act-protected salmon and steelhead due to an increase in barge traffic. We defeated a motion to dismiss our case challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ determination that NEXT does not need permission from the Corps under the Rivers and Harbors Act to construct the so-called “renewable” refinery, which would consume as much fracked gas as the City of Eugene, and is permitted to emit 1 million tons of greenhouse gasses per year.
Clean Air in Idaho
Advocates for the West and our partners reached an agreement with P4 Production, LLC, a phosphate mining and processing company located in Soda Springs, Idaho. Under the terms of the agreement, P4 Production will improve its public reporting processes under its Clean Air Act permit by more accurately disclosing the types and amounts of air pollutants it releases whenever equipment breakdowns and other events cause emissions to exceed the limits in the company’s permit. P4 Production has now taken these steps to improve its reporting practices and to include more detailed emissions estimates in its event reports.
