Oregon’s public trust doctrine has been misunderstood. The doctrine has not been judicially interpreted in over thirty years but was the subject of an Oregon Attorney General’s opinion in 2005. That opinion interpreted the scope of the doctrine to be limited to the beds of tidelands and...

The Columbia River Gorge, site of the nation’s first national scenic area and the only near sea level passage through the Cascade Mountains, possesses the longest continuously occupied site of human habitation in North America. The Gorge has served as a major transportation corridor between...

This review of Timothy's Egan's 2009 book, "The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved America," lauds Egan's storytelling while questioning the title of his book. Egan tells a gripping tale about the largest wildfire in North America, a 1910 blaze in the Bitterroot Mountains along the...

One of the principal, if unexpected, results of the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission is the rise of background principles of property and nuisance law as a categorical defense to takings claims. Our writings on the background principles defense have...

This review of David Schorr's book, The Colorado Doctrine: Water Rights, Corporations, and Distributive Justice on the American Frontier, maintains that the book is a therapeutic corrective to the standard history of the origins of western water law as celebration of economic efficiency and...

This article is a brief review of the convoluted history of what are known as the Oregon and California forest lands, federal lands that were once the subject of a 19th century federal railroad grant, then became the focus of widespread land fraud and official corruption, which led to the...

This is the tables of contents and cases, the preface, and part of the introductory chapter to the 3rd edition of Native American Natural Resources Law, published by Carolina Academic Press. This coursebook is suitable for a 2- or 3-credit course in Indian Law or Environmental and Natural...

This article explains the numerous environmental protections contained in an unlikely statute, the Federal Power Act, first enacted in 1920. Federally licensed hydropower projects are often the largest influences on streamflows in watersheds, so making the projects environmentally compatible is...

On the eve of what would become a series of listings of Columbia Basin salmon under the Endangered Species Act, Professor Blumm and Mr. Simrin analyze the evolution of the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Program program from the passage of the Northwest Power Act in 1980 through program...

Licensing of hydroelectric projects by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under the Federal Power Act (FPA) materially affects stream flows on rivers throughout the nation. Often overlooked, FERC licensing will gain prominence in the next decade as hundreds of projects must be...