Environmental & Natural Resources

Our extensive experience in the areas of resource management, treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather; natural resource damage claims, and other environmental issues makes us uniquely qualified to represent Indian tribes and tribal departments. Our attorneys have:

• Litigated numerous treaty, hunting, fishing, and gathering, trust-land management, boundary and use, and leasing dispute cases; 
• Drafted resource codes; 
• Evaluated complex biological and historical issues and expert reports; 
• Developed species-by-species management protocols;  
• Litigated the validity or cancellation of rights of way;
• Dealt with a number of hazardous materials situations, including evaluating mold and other infestations in tribal housing; 
• Handled clean-up issues, clean water and clean air litigation, tribal treatment as a state for various environmental purposes, and drainage and watershed issues; 
• Negotiated a settlement among a tribe, a tribal entity, and a railroad for restoration of the grade and the environment along a line of rail through the reservation, including prevention of the establishment of a public trail along the line of rail;  
• Represented tribes in negotiations and cooperative agreements with state and local entities to regulate waters over which both the tribe and state claim jurisdiction; and  
• Represented a tribe against a state’s attempt to claim diminishment of the tribe’s reservation in order to exercise permitting authority under the Clean Water Act.