Public Lands, Water, and Wildlife Law

• Semester: Fall 2025
• Course ID: 391E-3
• Credit Hours: 3
• Unique: 30700

Description

This three-credit survey course focuses on the legal issues that pervade the conservation and regulation of public lands, wildlife, fisheries, and wetlands. These issues include, among others, competing claims of the "public interest" versus private property rights; the roles of administrative agencies and the judiciary in environmental decision making; tensions presented by the multiple use/sustainable yield standard in federal law; conflicts among and between local, state, and federal approaches to natural resource regulation; and the opposing goals of resource management espoused by fishermen, farmers, developers, environmentalists, and recreational users. These issues will be developed in the context of the regulatory schemes embodied in the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act and the various statutes that govern federal public lands, such as the Wilderness Act and Federal Land Policy Management Act. The focus of the course is primarily U.S. law; however, it will touch on international law relevant to natural resources and, where appropriate, compare U.S. law to the laws of other countries.