Trustees for Alaska, the state’s only homegrown environmental law firm, provides free legal services to protect and defend Alaska’s lands, waters, wildlife, and communities. We represent Alaska Native villages, community groups, local and national conservation groups, statewide coalitions, fishing groups, and individual Alaskans. We believe all Alaskans deserve clean air and water, and healthy and nutritious food. Much of our work centers on preventing exploitative industry practices that threaten the water, food sources, livelihoods,and way of life of Alaska’s rural communities and residents.
Our goal is to prevent harm caused by pollution and inadequate or unlawful industry practices. We know what that devastation looks like. The effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill still haunt the families, businesses,and communities of Prince William Sound. Our work includes representing the Gwich’in people who have relied on the Porcupine Caribou Herd for thousands of years for food and cultural needs. Oil and gas development on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge threatens their way of life. We also represent a coalition of Bristol Bay residents whose coastal economy relies on the region’s premiere sockeye salmon fishery, which is threatened by the proposed Pebble mine.
Without vigilance, the salmon, animals, wild places, and communities that have helped Alaska thrive could become unsustainable, dirty, and toxic. People whose families and culture have relied on subsistence foods like salmon or caribou for centuries could lose everything.
Donations from individuals fuel our work and make it possible for our legal team to provide services free of charge to those who cannot otherwise afford it. $1,000 supports an attorney’s salary for half a week and $5,000 supports an attorney’s salary for two and a half weeks. Every penny allows Trustees for Alaska to address Alaska’s most pressing conservation issues.