The Trust draws on legal leverage, science, and public policy expertise to win important environmental cases and to create solutions to protect and restore the Colorado Plateau. When necessary, our legal team utilizes the courts to ensure that both land managers and industry operators comply with environmental statutes designed to protect public and environmental health. We also prepare rulemaking petitions and work with federal land managers and regulators to improve implementation of existing laws and regulations. Finally, we help develop and then implement progressive policies such as the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act, which has enabled the Four Forest Restoration Initiative.
The Trust uses the courts to protect the plateau’s landscapes, rivers, and clean air. Our Energy Program’s litigation aims to prevent our public lands from being mined for coal, oil shale, tar sands, and uranium, which if developed would exacerbate climate change and wreak havoc on the plateau’s natural resources. View Program ›
Across the West, archaic mining laws and regulations enable uranium mines to spend decades moving between active and standby status without new environmental review, or a deadline for required reclamation. The Trust is spearheading an effort to amend the mining regulations to require modern environmental review and timely reclamation. View Program ›
The Trust has led development of state and federal policies guiding critically important restoration of Arizona’s ponderosa pine forests. Not stopping there, we are ensuring that policies become on-the-ground reality, knowing that conservation policies will only endure if they translate into tangible benefits for people, places, animals, and water. View Program ›
Our nation has some of the world’s best laws and policies governing land management. Unfortunately, attempts to circumvent them are never-ending. The Trust’s defense of the Plateau relies on our ability to craft win-win initiatives whenever possible and to back negotiation up with litigation when necessary.