The firm's clients include local governments, non-profit groups, individual owners of mountain property, rafting companies, and others with an intense interest in the management and use of publicly owned land. The firm has developed special expertise in the complex statutory schemes governing the public lands and their resources: FLPMA, the Wilderness Act, NFMA, NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, Section 4(f) of the Transportation Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Clean Water Act, and state laws affecting state and local park land, school trust land, and open space.

The firm's work in the public land arena includes counseling clients on major development projects using or adjoining public lands; counseling clients who are participating in land exchanges with governmental entities; litigating proposals for federal action affecting or against using public lands and resources; assisting clients to obtain rights-of-way across public lands; and advising clients whose private land is affected by activities on or management of nearby public land. This practice overlaps with many of our other practice areas, including airports, project development and litigation.

The firm's clients have included a local government invalidating old mining claims; a nonprofit organization seeking to protect roadless areas in national forests from oil and gas development; a biological laboratory doing climate change-related research in a national forest and seeking protection from increasingly heavy use of the area; artists seeking a federal permit to install a work of art on public lands; rafting companies seeking access to run trips using public land, a developer seeking to develop school trust lands while preserving large tracts as natural prairie; municipal entities concerned about Grand Canyon overflight regulations, a ranch participating as an affected party in a federal land exchange and recruiting a conservation buyer to take title to a portion of the exchanged lands, and a homeowners' association protecting instream flows in a river through the area.



Clark County v. FAA, 522 F.3d 437 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (successful challenge to federal agency approval of siting of towers on public land near end of proposed airport runway)

River Runners for Wilderness v. Martin, 2007 WL 4200677 (D. Ariz. 2007) (successful defense of agency's allocation of permits and management prescriptions for Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park)

Friends of Marolt v. U.S.D.O.T., 382 F.3d 1088 (10th Cir. 2004) (represented citizens advocating alternative to realignment of highway through public park)

Pitkin County v. Timroth, 87 P.3d 102 (Colo. 2004) (represented local Land Trust and other amici curiae in defense of County open space parcels created on abandoned mining claims)

Greene v. Citigroup, 215 F.3d 1336 (10th Cir. 2000) (represented interstate compact board in obtaining dismissal of action seeking declaration of compact violation)

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Smith, 110 F.3d 724 (10th Cir. 1997) (challenge to scope of agency's conservation and recovery duties under Endangered Species Act)

Catron County v. Babbitt, 75 F.3d 1429 (10th Cir. 1996) (represented amicus in support of government's critical habitat designation)

Aspen Wilderness Workshop v. Colorado Water Conservation Board, 901 P.2d 1251 (Colo. 1995) (established special statutory fiduciary duty affecting the Board's proposed relinquishment of the public's interest in instream flow water rights)

City of Colorado Springs v. Eagle County, 895 P.2d 1105 (Colo. App. 1994), cert. denied, 116 S.Ct. 564 (1995) (represented citizens' group in successful defense of County's denial of land use permit against regulatory takings and preemption claims)

Waste Systems Corp. v. County of Martin, Minn., 985 F.2d 1381 (8th Cir. 1993) (filed amicus brief on behalf of county seeking to regulate landfill by imposing composting requirement)

Colorado Environmental Coalition v. Lujan, 803 F. Supp. 364, 1992 WL 231020, 22 ELR 21,542 (D. Colo. 1992) (represented citizens' organization in successful challenge to Bureau of Land Management's wilderness designation process in three western states)

Colorado Wildlife Federation v. Turner, 23 ELR 20402, 36 Env't Cases 1409 (D. Colo. 1992) (established citizens' standing to enforce habitat protection provisions of Endangered Species Act)

Holy Cross Wilderness Defense Fund v. Madigan, 960 F.2d 1515 (10th Cir. 1992) (challenge to wetlands permitting process)

Aurora v. Bell, 799 P.2d 33 (Colo. 1990) (challenge to scope and exercise of water rights in federal wilderness area)

Sierra Club v. Baker, 1990 WL 116845 (D.D.C. 1990) (established duty of a public international organization to comply with domestic environmental laws, overcoming various immunity claims)

Sierra Club v. Hodel, 675 F. Supp. 594 (D. Utah 1987), aff'd and rev'd in part, 848 F.2d 1068 (10th Cir. 1988), on remand, 737 F. Supp. 629 (D. Utah 1990), affirmed, 949 F.2d 362 (10th Cir. 1991) (successful challenge to process allowing construction on right-of-way through wilderness candidate areas on federal public lands)

Sierra Club v. Block, 615 F. Supp. 44 (D. Colo. 1985); Sierra Club v. Block, 622 F. Supp. 842 (D. Colo. 1985); Sierra Club v. Lyng, 661 F. Supp. 1490 (D. Colo. 1987), dismissed as unripe sub nom. Sierra Club v. Yeutter, 911 F.2d 1405 (10th Cir. 1990) (complex, precedent-setting litigation establishing existence and scope of federal reserved water rights in wilderness areas)

Federal regulation of overflights of Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

Proposed landfill adjacent to Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, CA

Relicensing of Gross Reservoir, CO


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