Western Environmental Law Center
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Mission Statement
The Western Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to defend and protect the American West’s treasured landscapes, iconic wildlife and rural communities. We combine our legal skills with sound conservation biology and environmental science to address major environmental issues in the West in the most strategic and effective manner. We work at the national, regional, state, and local levels; and in all three branches of government. We integrate national policies and regional perspective with the local knowledge of our 100+ partner groups to implement smart and appropriate place-based actions. WELC has a highly experienced team of attorneys, conservation biologists and Western policy experts. We work close to the ground, with offices in Oregon, Montana, and New Mexico. As a public interest law firm, WELC does not charge clients and partners for services, but relies instead on charitable gifts from individuals, families, and foundations to accomplish our mission.
About This Cause
WILDLANDS The West is defined by its natural heritage of wildlife, rivers, forests, and wildlands. The region is blessed with communities of life that make it special. Since its inception, WELC has worked hard to preserve and restore unique characteristics of the West, including wildlife species and their habitat; free-flowing rivers; and landscapes of quiet and solitude. The Wildlands program has five campaigns, each of which reflect WELC’s focused efforts to ensure that the West remains the geography of hope. WILDLIFE One of WELC’s supporters remarked that as a high school student he remembers vividly lying awake at night in his sleeping bag in Glacier National Park in Montana, with an unusually keen focus on the sounds of the wind and trees, for the singular reason that he was camped in the range of the grizzly bear. The mere presence of that magnificent animal, even if miles away, gave that place a truly rare nature. Understanding that the future of the West means little without its iconic wildlife, WELC is dedicated to preserving and restoring healthy, functioning natural ecosystems and the native wildlife species that depend on them. Within the Wildlife program, we focus on protecting wildlife species indigenous to the West. Though not the only wildlife species we work to protect, we focus on eight campaigns: Canada Lynx, Mexican Gray Wolf, Pronghorn, Wild Salmon, Sierra Amphibians, Northern Spotted Owl, Wolverine, and Pacific Gray Wolf. CLIMATE & ENERGY Our world is warming, with dire consequences to the American West’s iconic lands, rivers, wildlife, and communities. The climate crisis links us all: We are all responsible for our reliance on the dirty, carbon-intensive fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gas pollution and smother our planet by trapping the sun’s heat and triggering rapid, irreversible climatic shifts. But, as the saying goes, in every crisis rests opportunity. With the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to sharply reduce greenhouse gas pollution and transition to a clean, carbon-free energy economy. At the same time, we can protect the landscapes that provide us with clean water, clean air, lands to farm, and places to hunt, fish, and play. We work to create and enforce laws and policies that harness the American West’s ingenuity to make this transition. WELC envisions a world committed to robust climate and energy policies, which will avoid catastrophic climate change and ensure the resilience of our ecological systems – systems critical to the persistence of our wildlands and communities.