News
Spring Valley Wind Finally Protecting Bats
A recent article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal details Nevada’s Spring Valley Wind energy facility’s belated steps to curtail wind turbine operations to reduce the deaths of bats at the facility, which have been far higher than the developer and BLM predicted. The initial number predicted and allowable death limit was 169 for 2013, but the…
Good News for the Clearwater-Lochsa!
By Advocates for the West Board Member Linwood Laughy: Two recent developments have dealt another blow to the Port of Lewiston, which has launched an aggressive promotional and legal campaign to open Highway 12 to megaloads and thus attract incoming traffic to its newly extended $2.8 million container dock. Normal traffic over this dock has…
Raven Killers
UPDATE – 5/29/14 We are elated to announce that the agencies have backed down, and no ravens will be poisoned or crushed this spring. Fish and Game representative Jeff Gould claims the agencies will execute this project next spring, once a supplemental environmental assessment has been completed, but Advocates for the West and our clients are here to…
Victory for Bighorn Sheep!
On Monday, March 17th – 2014, Advocates for the West’s Senior Attorney Laurie Rule appeared in court as an intervenor on behalf of the US Forest Service. We backed the agency’s decision to restrict domestic sheep grazing on much of the Payette National Forest due to the likelihood of domestic and bighorn interaction. Such interactions lead to bighorn contracting a fatal…
The Tortoise Trail
An ongoing saga of the wandering mega-load By Linwood Laughy February 11: Day 70 on the Tortoise Trail… Today General Electric’s giant water evaporator evades the rigors of a Montana winter in a warehouse in Bonner, 11 miles east of Missoula, while being “reconfigured” to meet Canadian transport requirements. Omega Morgan transporter will likely depart…
“Wolf Haters” and a letter to the US Forest Service
As most of us are painfully aware, wolf hunting in Idaho is an increasingly worrisome concern to those of us who understand the intrinsic value of maintaining a healthy population of wolves in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. Idaho in particular has received some glaringly bad press for its treatment of this issue, as highlighted in…
ADVOCATES FOR THE WEST ANNOUNCES SELECTION OF NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WENDY WILSON
Boise, ID – December 2, 2013: Advocates for the West, a Boise-based nonprofit public interest environmental law firm, announces the appointment of Wendy Wilson as the organization’s incoming Executive Director. Laird Lucas, founder of AW, will continue with the organization and assumes a new role as Litigation Supervisor for the growing legal staff on January…
Wall Street Journal reports: our suit is costing GE money.
Road Too Far: GE Strains to Deliver Energy Colossus By Kate Linebaugh – Wednesday, 16 October 2013 General Electric Co. has a colossal problem. The industrial conglomerate makes a machine the size of a Space Shuttle orbiter that can extract crude oil from the depths of the Canadian oil sands. But first it has to…
AW files suit to stop megaloads from traveling up Highway 12
On the evening of August 8th, Advocates for the West partnered with the Nez Perce Tribe and filed a suit against the US Forest Service for failing to uphold the requirements of a federal court order issued in February stating that the USFS has a legal responsibility to protect the Wild and Scenic River corridor. This latest suit alleges that the USFS’s failure…
