About

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The American West is a special place.  Its wide open spaces, mountains, and rivers are home to countless wildlife and fish species - many imperilled by habitat loss and fragmentation due to human impacts and climate change. 

The American West is also unique because most of it, over 350 million acres, are public lands.  These lands are held in trust for the entire nation and future generations.  Under federal laws, government agencies are supposed to manage the lands to protect and sustain them for the future.  Unfortunately, all too often our agencies violate their legal duties; and allow industries to damage the public lands, rivers and streams, and the fish and wildlife that depend on them.

That is where we come in. Advocates for the West is a public interest, not-for-profit environmental law firm that challenges conservation threats through aggressive litigation and sophisticated negotiation - and wins.  We use law and science to enforce our nation's bedrock environmental statutes.  Our track record of success speaks for itself: we win in court or favorably settle nearly 85% of the cases we take on.  And those wins translate to protection of the West’s public lands, water, and wildlife, today and for future generations.

From the Northern Rockies to the Sierras and Cascades, and across the vast Sagebrush Sea in between, Advocates for the West makes the West’s conservation community stronger. Based in Boise, Idaho, with an office in Portand, Oregon, we are public land and environmental law experts.   Since our founding in 2003, we have provided our winning legal muscle, at no charge, to more than 30 conservation groups, and many individual concerned citizens, throughout the West.

When conservation groups need first-rate legal help, they come to us - because we consistently win in court.  And our winning record is just as important outside the courtroom: agencies and corporations are familiar with our expertise, and often choose to avoid litigation by discontinuing their environmentally damaging practices or negotiating settlements that we skillfully leverage to create the maximum benefit to conservation efforts.

Our legal muscle helps our conservation partners make an even greater impact.  Your support doesn’t just help our efforts – it advances the missions of all our conservation partners.  And because we are recognized by the IRS as a Section 501(c)(3) public charity, all donations to support our work are tax-deductible.

Thank you for taking some time to learn more about Advocates for the West.  We hope you enjoy our website, which is filled with details about our Cases, Partners, and the places and Wildlife we fight to protect.  Before you leave we hope you will join our work and sign up for our informative emails or make a donation. Together we are trustees of the future of the West’s public lands, rivers, and wildlife.  It is our shared duty to protect these treasures for our children and all future generations.  Help us save the West!