Same Battles Over and Over: The 2026 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference

After not attending since 2019, I arrived early for this year’s Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) at the University of Oregon Law School. It was the 44^th session in the world’s longest such gathering. It ran from March 12^th thru the 15^th. Given the current political climate, the slogan this year was “Fight Back, Voices for Good.” (First one I attended was in 1986. It was the launch pad for our Ancient Forest Protection Movement.)

Right off, I dropped my phone and it broke down. All I had left was a green screen. That complicated some things, like connecting with people I had plans to connect with, fact-checking, photography, etc. The way iPhones have become a constant appendage is a story for another time. First time I saw a cell phone was at PIELC, circa 1987. It was bigger than a brick.

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Anything political or social that I examine, I run through a series of screens:

1) Always “Follow the Money” – Mark “Deep Throat” Felt, Deputy Director of the FBI during the Nixon Administration;

2) “It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it.” ~ Upton Sinclair, who, a century ago, used “a man,” instead of “someone;”

3) “Believe nothing until it’s been officially denied.” ~ Claud Cockburn

Additionally, I use these notes from two of my deceased pal/heroes that I had the honor of having introduced decades ago. They became close, appearing aty events together:

“Think More; Believe Less” ~ John Trudell, the only chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and our great counterculture poet/spoken word artist/musician;

“There is no best of anything. There is shit you like. There is shit you don’t like. And there is shit you don’t give a shit about.” ~ John Sinclair, my fellow Flint native and Beat Poet/Blues musician, co-founder and Chairman of the White Panther Party. John sued and successfully exposed illegal government spying/wiretapping on Activist Groups. The upshot was the government eventually got sneakier about it. The Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) held a PIELC panel this year on how to encrypt communications to defend against on-going COINTELPRO-type government spying. I tell all the young attorneys and/or activists that they can’t go wrong reading the writings and listening to the music of both Johns.

Fight Back! Voice for Good

This year’s event was highly influenced by the Trump Administration’s slew of recent rollbacks on all sorts of hard-won environmental protections – from proposed, absurd vast increases in Public Lands logging; renewed liquidation of our remaining precious Ancient Forest; dropping enforcement of many Clean Water toxic safeguards; vast consumption of energy, water and siting issues with Data Centers popping up like Starbucks all across the nation; more drilling and mining; Wolf Slaughter; pro-oil extraction coupled with suppression of other, less-damaging energy sources; absurd claims that building more roads into pristine areas will prevent wildfires; stripping Federal land management agencies of employees and equipment; the rollback of the Clinton era Roadless Rule that currently stops road-building and resource extraction on approx. 58.5 million acres nationwide. Oregon alone has 2 million acres of Roadless Areas at risk – 2.2 million Oregonians get their drinking water from these threatened lands. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM = Bovines, Logs and Minerals) plan to increase logging in Oregon’s Coast Range to a preposterous 2 billion board feet per year, almost all old growth/Ancient Forest; to fighting the ICE deportation machine and Eco-damaging detainment centers that are a prominent, fierce issue with the young students who have grown up in multi-cultural communities.

PIELC was founded by visionary Professors Mike Axline and John Bonine. They were inspired by the Great “Archdruid,” pioneering mountaineer, WW2 hero and first Executive Director of the Sierra Club David Brower. Brower also went on to found Friends of the Earth,” John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies (1997), Friends of the Earth (1969) and Earth Island Institute. He was fixture at the early conferences.

The PIELC goal was to have law students, themselves, plan and operate a conference that examines notable ecological issues of the day and to develop plans and citizen coalitions to address said issues. Law students from around the country and globe, lawyers working cases and citizen activists are treated to panel discussions, keynote addresses, documentaries, etc.

Special concern was given to Native Lands issues in the US and Indigenous issues across the globe. The university built the wonderful Many Nations Longhouse next to the Law School. Students succeeded in getting the flags of Oregon’s nine Federally-recognized tribes placed on poles surrounding the plaza outside the college’s Student Union building. PIELC has been the scene of many Native issues panels and an annual Honoring the Elders dinner at the Longhouse. Many native speakers have been featured over the years. John Trudell once gave a Keynote Address to an over-flowing 700 attendees at the student union ballroom.

Conference attendees have opportunities to find out about and connect with potential allies on a wide range of issues. And, as Brower always noted, most of the effective planning and work on issues really take place in the hallways and the nearby restaurants and bars where numerous grassroots activist groups and strategies were birthed with back-of-the-napkin scribblings. My buddy Mike Roselle, co-founder of Earth First!, used to come and he never even went to a panel, choosing to roam the halls, restaurants and bars plotting strategies instead.

Comment Periods are like Life.

You do what you can in the time you’re given.”

~ Garrett Rose, NRDC

This year’s Conference started on Thursday with four small panels. I had decided to attend one titled “The Joy in the Fight: Building Grassroots Power Through Community and Courage.” Seeing that the four panelists were all paid professionals and not what I deem “grassroots,” and my years of doing exactly what the title proposes, I figured this should be interesting. I walked thru the hall as about 30 groups from wild horse protection to anti-ICE to nascent Wilderness proposals to watersheds…set up info tables along the sides. The panel and all the rest of them I attended over the weekend were overflowing. (I missed two just because I got delayed in the halls talking with allies and arrived right before their starts and was denied admission due to overcrowding.)

I got a standing room spot in the back. The first speaker began to bring up ideas on how to gain regular folk allies, educate the public and get the media to address your particular issue. He brought up hosting small gatherings, creating Petitions and Agency Comment Periods Letter Writing campaigns and lobbying efforts. He also brought up the “Name it and Save It” Brower strategy that we have used for decades. The next speakers brought up the need to have fun – “to throw the best parties” to attract allies, etc.

I started to feel bad. I felt, as a co-founder of the 80s/90s Ancient Forest Protection Campaign, like we had failed to finish the job and a new generation was having to revisit a lot of the same things we did in the past. Of course, we ran into some huge headwinds – from Big Timber and their political puppets; but also from the Big Greens, big money Foundations and extraction-supporting Democrats.

{I’ve written numerous takes (many on CounterPunch.org) on that and how PIELC becoming more of a Big Greens’ Job Fair for newly-minted attorneys than a more activist event over time, has played a part in it. Out of the Conference’s 64 panel presentations, I usually chose the more activist-oriented panels and avoid the ones more aligned with Big Green professionalism/elitism, given even when they don’t sabotage grassroots efforts, they tend to withhold support until they can cash in on it. And then they tend to bargain with the perpetrators and cut the baby in half.}

In the end, after presenting all those tools in the activist box, the sole time Actions “on the ground” were mentioned in the Grassroots Joy panel was the last speaker from the very Big Green, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She honestly noted that on-the-ground action was “not my niche.” Panels and trainings on Non-violent Civil Disobedience (CD) used to be standard at the Conference, as did having numerous panels with the grassroots CD activists themselves.

I was the last person called on to ask a question at the end of the panel. I gave a short history of my activism, my serving as the vice-president of the top statewide grassroots coalition and a leader of two smaller ones I helped co-found; how I was a Plaintiff in a seminal Old Growth forest lawsuit and how many times I and others went to DC to try and get the Big Greens and Democrats to sign on and how I saw it play out and how I think it will this time around.

I praised the panelists for their detailed listing of worthy efforts. But, I had to note the downplaying of CD. I noted that in my Ancient Forest experience, we tried all those good, necessary tools that did get mentioned. But, after 20 years of trying and suffering many losses anyway, it came down to on-the-ground CD.

It wasn’t until we had people up in the trees and photos of activist Leo Hund buried up to his neck in a rock wall erected across the road at the North Roaring Devil Timber Sale along the South Breitenbush River blockade appeared on the front pages in Beijing and Munich that, all the sudden, liquidation of our Ancient Forests gained national attention.

We did not pioneer Rallies at Logging sites, Tree Sits or Road Blockades. Activists in Australia, in Northern California, in Southern Oregon and elsewhere had done it all before. We benefited from their experience, many of their veterans joining/advising us and by our being closer to larger and more sympathetic media centers.

We also had the spectacular low-elevation Opal Creek forest as our flagship and it was close enough to the Willamette Valley populace that it was easier for people to get to know the issue by driving there through clearcuts and then experiencing the magnificent Opal Creek Ancient Forest.

One of our CD efforts was building a two-mile, long-planned Forest Service trail into the heart of Opal Creek. The District Ranger threatened to arrest George Atiyeh (RIP) and me for “Destruction of Government Property.” George dramatically extended his hands like he was going to get handcuffed and said, “Please do. I can’t wait for the show trial. Destruction of Government Property? You guys are the ones planing 11 miles of roads and 1700-acres of clearcuts.”

The Ranger was a bit of a bully. But, he wasn’t stupid. He was a worthy, smart opponent. He proudly holds the record for the most amount of Board Feet of Timber cut on his watch as a District Ranger and later a Forest Supervisor. He once told me, “If you guys ever succeed in getting Congress to change our mission from timber production, I’ll be the best manager of Wilderness you’ve ever seen.”

Soon 20,000 people a year were using the trail.

The Greenest Big Green

On one of my 80s DC lobbying missions, I got into it with Brock Evans, the vice-president of the Audubon Society over my complaining about the lack of Big Green support. Brock, one of our greatest environmental champions, convinced me that it was going to be on us to convince the Big Greens and that we “had to nationalize the issue” first. I did not like that, but Brock, as a young Sierra Club Northwest staffer had been THE guy who drew the lines on the maps in the 60s, detailing what would be asked for in the first Wilderness Bill. And everything we were fighting for then and now was on his maps, yet was removed from the final, first Wilderness Act that was passed, so I had to think he knew what he was talking about.

One of the happenings at PIELC every year is that one activist is voted on by the students to be given the David Bower Lifetime Achievement Award. This year’s honoree is Kristen Boyles. One year, my great friend Klamath Elder asnd Opal Creek Board Member Calvin Hecota (RIP) was given the award and he gave a magnificent speech before an appreciative crowd of around 500. Brock Evans, the only Big Green I know of who voluntarily got arrested peacefully protesting an Ancient Forest timber sale (in southern Oregon,) which certainly was not an easy decision for the proud Marine, deserves that award.

Smokey Bear on Life Support

Next morning I got up early and hit the 9:30am panel put on by wildlands firefighters who are upset with Trump’s Executive Orders claiming that increased logging and roading of pristine forests will prevent fires, when exactly the opposite is occurring and firefighters are more at risk due to it. 85% of all major wildfires are started by humans and 80% of those start within five meters of a road! The Forest Service already has 380,000 miles of roads with an $8.4 billion maintenance backlog! At its closest, the moon is 226,000 miles for Earth!

In addition, eCon’s DOGE fired 4000 Red Card-certified Fire Incident Team Forest Service employees and dropped most of the agency’s women using anti-DEI nonsense as justification. The Agency has seriously low employee morale, unfilled critical positions, lack of equipment and more turnover, as a result.

The Big Good Wolf

I next went to a panel on Wolf Slaughter. I have a large interest in this. I am a co-founder of the Yarrow Land Trust in NE Washington, which we started in 1974. For years, we had a faltering aspen grove that was aging out. It was putting out new shoots. But, herds of deer would bed down for the night next to the grove and eat all the new shoots.

Now we have hundreds of new Aspen saplings. It happened when a wolf pack got established in the adjacent National Forest. The wolves and a mountain lion den on a remote part of the trust land got the deer moving and abandoning the bed down site. It’s also the sole place I have ever heard wolves in the wild.

Then, in 2016, the entire Profanity Wolf Pack (named for the Kettle River Range peak where they first set up a den) was reduced to one female and three juveniles to the benefit of one rancher who has a welfare ranching Allotment to graze cattle at way under private rates on the Colville National Forest. The wolves were killed by shooters in helicopters.

The female fled north to the British Columbia/Washington border area and was illegally killed by an unknown human a year later. Collaborators from “Green” groups signed off on the government killings. And then did so again with the arrival of the Replacement Profanity Pack that filled the void. Some 29 wolves total have been killed for the rancher. This happens even though ranchers can get compensation of five times the value of any cow that is lost to predation!

One of the lies about big bad wolves is that they are a danger to humans. In the last 50 years only two cases of wolves killing a human in North America are certified. In contrast, some 22 people in the US are killed annually by livestock attacks. And 65 humans die per year from domestic dog attacks. Some 800,000 annual emergency room visits are related to dog attacks. When wolves get used to other top predators like humans, they leave us a wide berth. There has never been a wolf attack in Yellowstone NP.

The Roadless Rule Under Siege (again)

Next up was a Roadless Rule defense panel. Bill Clinton, on his way out the door, signed off on the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Policy in Jan. 2001 which prevented road-building or any industrial development in the nation’s Inventoried Roadless Areas. In August 2025, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins again initiated the process for rescinding it.

The Rule was rescinded during the Bush the Younger Administration. Obama appealed to get the Rule reinstated. The 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals brought it back in 2009 and it was affirmed again by the 10^th Circuit Court in 2011. Big Timber has appealed it to the Supreme Court, which has yet to make a ruling.

A rather short Public Comment Period about the government rollback plan got over 500,000 comments – 99% in opposition! Now, an effort to defend Roadless Areas permanently has Congressional Champions who have introduced the Roadless Area Conservation Act (RACA). Oregon’s two senators and four of five Democrat Members of Congress are co-sponsors. Ironically, the Universality of Oregon’s Congressional District’s new Congresswoman Val Hoyle has not, following her retired predecessor Rep. Peter DeFazio’s groveling before Big Timber.

Throw the Best Parties

On Friday evening, there was the annual Outlaw Bash put on by OG Earth First! veterans and local young activists. Some three hundred-plus attendees drove 15 miles to a farm along the Coast Range Fork of the Willamette River for music, libations, an effigy burn and camaraderie. The vast majority were under age 35.

Mick, who has been a creator of the effigies for years, notes this year’s Wickerman effigy,  who held photos of the usual suspects Trump, Miller, Hegseth, Bondi, Patel, et al. inside his stomach jail was named “Kevin.” Kevin is/was the “Conveyor of the Sacrifice.” Starting the fire was raffled off. It began with the raffle winner shooting a flaming arrow perfectly and it erupted and live music and dancing began.

I talked with some of the young people there. Their concerns are very much ICE, Trump’s War, the Internationale Pedophile Ring and across-the-board Ecological Devastation.

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I had a few phone numbers of people I needed to connect with in my dead phone. Like back in the old analog days, I was able to connect without the digital helper. So, lunch break Saturday, a few of us had a good session setting up how we were going to fight the BLM’s liquidation plans on the ground when, not if, it comes to it. We hope to scout out all the proposed new Timber Sale.

After that, I went to my good hiking partner Christine’s nearby home where she had made a delicious lunch. I was already thinking of skipping the later Collaboration panel, as I knew I would be pretty upset. I tend to skip the more corporate panels and ones about collaboration with the resource extractors, as they just annoy me. The amount of money available that is controlled by ineffective efforts that could have been used by grassroots activists on things that actually work to that is spent on going-nowhere projects and lawsuits is just too much.

One of the wolf kill collaborators I wrote about above was on the panel. Christine, a physical therapist, had nothing scheduled until a couple hours later. So, we went on a couple mile hike thru the forested hills above her house and the University, shedding layers on the sunny Spring day.

On Saturday evening, there was a benefit for the NW Forest Climate Alliance. It was held in a cavernous ballroom attached to a Brewery. The 200 or so crowd was older than Friday’s – about 50/50 under and over 40. If anything, Eugene is known for it’s large activist community.

That tactic of “throwing the best parties” if you want to attract allies, sure was confirmed with those two evening events. I went to both events with Michael Carrigan, a friend and ally who was very instrumental in saving Opal Creek. He and Susan Gordon, both from Oregon PeaceWorks back then, kept George Atiyeh and me busy by setting up opportunities for us to promote Opal Creek protection with speaking engagements at Rotary Clubs, Churches, Knights of Columbus and other fraternal organizations, etc. George and I figured we talked to over10,000 people. We somehow also got 10,000 signatures on a letter noting that the signers would protest on-site any effort to log Opal Creek.

One of Sen. Mark Hatfield’s (RIP) 80-something year-old High School classmates told him she was going to chain herself to a bulldozer if logging plans went ahead. Hatfield (R-OR), who was clearly influenced by his being at Hiroshima shortly after the nuclear bombing was the Senate’s top Pro-Peace/Anti-War politician, while also being Big Timber’s greatest supporter. He had the largest hand in the clearcutting of over 6 million acres of Public-owned Ancient Forests.

However, Hatfield eventually was the sponsor of the legislation that saved Opal Creek. This came after he had George, me and two other conservationists spend a year with a Willamette University mediator in meetings with 14 Big Timber execs and their politician allies. And even then, some Big Greens tried to cut a lesser deal behind our backs.

“Back in the 1940s, collaborators were hung from lampposts.”

(first thing I heard when I asked what panels would be good to attend)

I did run into my activist friend Pam, who did attend the Collaboration Panel. She is quite unflappable. But, she seemed a bit shaken by the experience. Seems it was the disaster I thought it would be. Chad Hanson, a brilliant Brower protégé from the John Muir Institute and one of our Zero Cut on Public Lands crusaders was on it, as was Ric Bailey, one of my fellow Oregon Natural Resources Board Members back in the day. Of course, one of the proud collaborators, instead of debating things on their merits, personally attacked Chad as Chad was presenting the science showing the ways Collaboration had made issues worse. The moderator stepped up and warned him about personal attacks. He kept at it and lit into Chad, calling him “dishonest.” At which point, the moderator cut him off!

Activist Legal Defense

I finally connected with my heroic friend Lauren Regan, a UofO Law School alum who is the head of CLDC. Lauren and her Eugene-based group defend activists from all kinds of progressive movements for free. She is busy all over the country these days. We both lost our neighboring mountain cabins to the 2020 Labor Day wildfires.

Pretty much any non-violent activist arrested can count on CLDC to “have your back” – that’s their slogan. Lauren has represented Native activists (including Leonard Peltier); urban, forest, water, energy activists. Lauren is revered in these movements.…CLDC is one of CounterPunch’s recommended groups to donate to.

I also ran into PIELC co-founderJohn Bonine. I always like to check in with John. I was once a passenger on a raft he piloted, after I had earlier injured my shoulder paddling a small, inflatable Tahiti down a rapids during a now-legendary Rogue River trip 22 of us forest defenders took in the late 80s. John loves to introduce others to attendee Law School alums from around the country who are doing great work. Alums come from all over. I also spent some time with Michael Nixon, one of Native activists’ tireless attorneys, who came in from Pittsburgh, PA. He’s been iknvolved with the San Carlos Apache Oak Flats Sacred land that the Feds are signing over to a foreign copper mining company. PIELC had Wensler Nosie, Sr., former Chairman of the San Carlos for a Keynote Address on it a few years ago.

John Bonine is rightly proud (I asked him) of how PIELC has lasted and the good it has accomplished over the decades since its founding. When I last saw him, he was taking photos of all the group display tables, where so much connecting and strategizing takes place.

I am forever grateful that John and Mike Axline also recruited and helped UofO alum Ralph Bradley as the lead attorney on our seminal 1986 Ancient Forest Lawsuit – “Oregon Natural Resources Council; Breitenbush Community, Inc.; Michael Donnelly, Plaintiffs-appellants, v. U.S. Forest Service; Bugaboo Timber Company, Defendants-appellees, 834 F.2d 842 (9th Cir. 1987).”

ONWARD

THIS year we are going to be seeing critical ecological threats across the board. As I have noted, it is going to take all the tools in the activist box to end/reverse the Trump era assaults on Gaia, International Order and Civil Liberties. PIELC is one of the best tools. Even though I critique catering to the professionals and would like to see the resulting settling on watering-down/baby-in-half dynamic and the diversion of funds that could be used for better grassroots results change, I do realize we need them. Whenever maintaining/increasing organizational budgets trump the issues they purport to address, Gaia loses.

I have some suggestions for next year:

1) Native Issues were less on the agenda this year than in the past. I suggest bringing back the Longhouse group of panels on current issues facing Native Lands and Native People. It takes a lot more than the obligatory Land Acknowledgment in the brochure and spoken at the beginning. My Native pals don’t really like the Acknowledgment anyway (other than its implied admission of guilt) as it comes without any real corrective – Land Back;

2) International speakers and attendees were nowhere near as numerous as in the past. Understandable, given the White “Christian” Nationalist government we have these days. Who wants to visit here these days? I suggest more effort be given to recruiting brave international activists. We need to hear their stories, as they are missing from mainstream media;

3) More Keynote Speakers, especially International and Native ones;

4) Non-violent CD panels and training sessions. Back in the day, a group of Earth First! women activists conducted such trainings that were crucial to our efforts. Such are crucial again;

5) Panels on Activist History…the horrible losses, the success stories, the pitfalls, the costs of collaboration, more versions of the history of actions like the one I’ve written about here (which is but one out of hundreds) expanded to ones all over the forested areas of the country. Etc. And more panels on past legal successes. We very much need to celebrate them;

6) More Immigration, Anti-ICE, Animal Rights, Overshoot/Over consumption, etc. panels.

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