News

Canadian mining company K2 Gold recently announced that it is suspending its controversial gold drilling project on California’s Conglomerate Mesa. For years, Advocates for the West has worked with our partners at Friends of the Inyo, Conservation Lands Foundation, and other groups to protect these biodiverse and culturally significant public lands — located on the doorstep of…

Advocates for the West recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of Idaho Conservation League (ICL) and Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s latest approval of a five-year gold exploration project in the Centennial Mountains near the agricultural community of Kilgore in eastern Idaho. The project, about 80 miles north of Idaho Falls on the Caribou-Targhee National…

Last June, we won a resounding court victory in our case for Idaho Conservation League against high-profile California suction dredge miner Shannon Poe. There, the Court ruled that Poe violated the Clean Water Act when he polluted Idaho’s South Fork of the Clearwater River without a required permit.  Now, in the next stage of the…

Advocates for the West recently filed a motion to intervene in an October 2021 lawsuit in the Eastern District of California federal district court. The lawsuit brought by snowmobiling groups objects to the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to place limits on over-snow vehicle use on the national forest in northern California. Advocates for the West is representing WildEarth Guardians…

Advocates for the West recently filed a lawsuit challenging the controversial National Park Service management plan for expanding private agriculture at California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, one of a handful of national parks that permits cattle grazing.  The Park Service plan paves the way for 20-year leases for beef and dairy ranchers in the park, enshrining and expanding commercial…

Advocates for the West recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of Idaho Conservation League (ICL) against the U.S. Forest Service for failing to comply with environmental laws when it approved the 20-year Sage Hen Integrated Forest Restoration Project. The project includes extensive road construction, logging, thinning, and prescribed fire, plus some watershed restoration activities, on 68,000-acres…

Advocates for the West recently filed the opening brief in our case for Friends of the Clearwater against the U.S. Forest Service to protect Idaho’s Salmon-Clearwater Divide from massive clearcuts and other destructive logging in biodiverse old growth forest and sensitive watersheds. Our case challenges two neighboring logging projects, “Hungry Ridge” and “End of the World,” which when…

The Nez Perce Tribe recently reached a settlement agreement with the state of Oregon resolving a case that Advocates for the West filed—along with the Tribe’s Office of Legal Counsel—challenging the state of Oregon’s Clean Water Act section 401 water quality certification for the relicensing of the Hells Canyon Complex. The Hells Canyon Complex, owned and operated by…

Advocates for the West won a strong victory for threatened Upper Willamette River wild spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead last week when U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez issued a final opinion and order directing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to immediately undertake new measures at dams in Oregon’s Willamette River basin. The injunction requires the Corps to…

Advocates for the West notified the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they are in violation of the Endangered Species Act by approving the “Sage Hen Integrated Restoration Project” in Idaho’s West Mountains without protecting threatened bull trout. The Sage Hen Project authorizes constructing over 80 miles of roads and commercially harvesting timber on 18,000 acres over the next…