Natural Resources Clinic
- Professors, Natural Resources Clinic:Michael Soules
- Course Number and Description
Mission and Clients
The Natural Resources Clinic is one of the nation’s first, opening in 1978. Originally, Clinic students worked in conjunction with staff attorneys at the National Wildlife Federation on environmental issues such as protecting federal public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. In Spring 2010, the Clinic moved in house to the Law School. It continues to focus on issues related to public lands, and students work on projects before administrative agencies, state and federal courts, and state legislatures.
Scope
Clinic students work on district court challenges to several recent and anticipated revisions of rules used by federal land management agencies to govern activities on federal lands across the West. Students obtain expert testimony and prepare witnesses; analyze and present detailed scientific and environmental data; and submit complex legal briefs. Cases often receive national attention.
Types of Legal Assistance
Students have participated in cases challenging:
- Federal agencies’ compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Wilderness Act, Endangered Species Act, and other statutes when federal agencies permit livestock grazing, mining, road building, surface coal mining, or oil and gas development on environmentally sensitive lands
- Potential threats to endangered species, including species like the whooping crane and black tailed prairie dog
- Surface coal mining on federal lands containing crucial wildlife habitat
- Fences blocking wildlife access to and across federal lands
- Oil and gas leasing and development on federal lands
- Protection of wilderness areas from mechanized road development and road building
- Federal agency actions to protect natural resources where the regulated permit holder claims the federal action resulted in a taking of his private property
