Raincoast presents at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference
Raincoast biologists attended the 43rd gathering of the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference to present on forests, fire, water, and salmon.
Every year, the University of Oregon’s School of Law hosts the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Oregon to discuss legal strategies and policies that can advance environmental law and conservation initiatives across North America.
The conference brings together lawyers, Indigenous knowledge keepers, scientists, students, government officials, and advocates to engage in three days of panel presentations that tackle the most pressing legal and ecological challenges of our time. This year’s theme, Rising to the Challenge: Justice on the Horizon, felt particularly relevant under the current socio-political stressors that are both limiting actions to halt biodiversity loss, while restricting Indigenous-led and inclusive conservation efforts.
Raincoast gathered an interdisciplinary panel of biologists, Indigenous Fire Practitioners, and legal experts from Canada and the United States to examine how land-use activities, such as clear-cut logging, historical wildfire suppression, and water extraction, interact with climate change. Our panel identified how these cumulative effects, and the laws that underpin them, are driving high severity wildfires and low stream flows that can adversely affect wild salmon populations.
Our panel discussed these challenges at varying geographic scales across British Columbia and the American West. We also aimed to identify the legal, scientific, and community-based tools available to address the root causes of these challenges.
On the panel, Auston Chhor (Salmon Habitat Biologist) and I represented Canada on behalf of Raincoast’s Wild Salmon Program. Auston presented his work monitoring low summer stream flows in the Coldwater River in the interior of British Columbia during the summer of 2024. This project was collaboratively developed and delivered with our partners Scw’exmx Tribal Council and Citxw Nlaka’pamux Assembly.
Lower Thompson Chinook that spawn and rear in the Coldwater River are crucial to endangered Southern Resident killer whales due to their large body size, high fat content, and historical abundance. However, due to hydrological shifts associated with climate change, forestry practices, and water extraction, the Coldwater River is experiencing low flows and high water temperatures. The data gathered during this project will help address this challenge by informing decision-making on water conservation, land use planning, and climate adaptation for at-risk salmon populations in the Coldwater River and beyond.
After Auston, I presented my research, which examines the interactions between wildfires, forestry, and climate change. My work identifies how plantation-style forestry and clearcut logging interacts with climate change to drive high severity wildfires that can affect watershed hydrology and in-stream salmon habitat.
Importantly, my work also identifies the provincial laws and regulations that enable these land use activities, and explores policy tools to shift forestry from a timber-focused model, to one that more equally values forest and hydrologic function in watersheds. This transition is key to making our landscapes more resilient to severe wildfire, while also supporting communities and advancing the recovery of at-risk species like salmon.
The United States western region was represented by Ryan Reed (Program Director) and Ayuthea LaPier (Communications Coordinator), from the Fire Generation Collaborative (FireGen). FireGen envisions a fire world where decision-making centres the most impacted stakeholders – diverse young generations and Indigenous youth. As Indigenous Fire Practitioners, Ryan and Ayuthea spoke to the critical role that fire stewardship and cultural burning plays in supporting healthy forest ecosystems and communities. They also focused on the importance of centring Indigenous leadership, knowledge, and practices within policies related to forest and fire management. In addition, they emphasized the need to increase the amount of funding available to support the involvement, education, and training of young people to prepare them for proactive ecological fire management.
Ryan and Ayuthea also highlighted FireGen’s work to pass amendments to the Northwest Forest Plan, which is a regional plan that guides the management of federal forests in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. The Northwest Forest Plan was up for amendment in early 2025, and FireGen successfully secured 113 Tribal-inclusion amendments into the new plan. If implemented, these amendments will shift tribal access, rights, and decision-making on lands encompassed by the Northwest Forest Plan – which spans across many Indigenous territories and homelands.
Our final panelist was Elizabeth Dunne (Attorney and Director of Legal Advocacy) from the Earth Law Center, which aims to advance ecocentric laws, policies, and governance for the well-being of the Earth community by shifting the paradigm of environmental law. Elizabeth focused her presentation on the Elwha River watershed, located in Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal territory. The Elwha River is an important salmon-bearing river that supports Chinook, coho, sockeye, pink, chum salmon, as well as steelhead and bull trout. The Elwha also provides drinking water for the town of Port Angeles, Washington and neighboring communities.
In 2014, the project removing two dams on the Elwha River was completed, which restored access to 145 miles of upstream river habitat for fish species. Since then, salmon population recovery has occurred, however, the watershed has faced another challenge. Extensive clear-cut logging has occurred in the Elwha River watershed, which threatens to undo salmon recovery, risks degrading the source of Port Angeles’s drinking water, interferes with the rights of Indigenous peoples to gather medicinal plants, and negates the millions of dollars still being spent on Elwha River restoration. Elizabeth’s presentation helped illustrate how our laws and policies must account for the growing body of science that demonstrates how clearcut logging impacts stream flows.
Elizabeth shared successful and collaborative legal and organizing efforts that have, at least temporarily, halted the future logging of mature and old-growth forests in the Elwha watershed. These include:
- A lawsuit with Earth Law Center as plaintiff (Earth Law Center et al. v. Washington Department of Natural Resources et al.) asserting that by logging legacy forests, the state failed in its duty to secure the right to a healthy environment, account for environmental justice concerns, and consider impacts to the entire ecosystem.
- Community organizing, citizen science, and strategic litigation that resulted in the protection of critical forests in the Elwha River Watershed.
- Filing of an influential amicus brief in Conservation Northwest et al. v. Washington Department of Natural Resources et al., in which the Washington Supreme Court issued a landmark decision recognizing that state forest lands did not have to be logged to generate profits.
Elizabeth also spoke about how recognizing the rights or legal personhood of rivers is one means of giving ecosystems a voice in their protection and restoration.
After Auston, Ryan, Ayuthea, Elizabeth, and I finished our presentations, we had a great Q & A dialogue with audience members. We received questions that ranged from identifying the interactions between logging and wildfire in Oregon, to wild salmon conservation in Washington, to legal queries about the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in British Columbia. After much discussion, our session concluded with new collaborative relationships formed and a clear vision for addressing the challenges discussed.
At home in BC, it became clear to me that while there is recognition that wildfires are becoming more intense and severe in some areas of our province, the implications of this trend on aquatic ecosystems and salmon are not at the forefront of the conversation.
To remedy this, I will provide a follow-up article where I analyze what more severe wildfires mean for wild salmon – and how we can address it. Stay tuned for more!
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Raincoast’s in-house scientists, collaborating graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors make us unique among conservation groups. We work with First Nations, academic institutions, government, and other NGOs to build support and inform decisions that protect aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the wildlife that depend on them. We conduct ethically applied, process-oriented, and hypothesis-driven research that has immediate and relevant utility for conservation deliberations and the collective body of scientific knowledge.
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