I had a funny dream snippet this morning that I was introducing author Ben Goldfarb to Mitch Wagner, the attorney who represented the friends of Lake Skinner case. And I realized this ancient history was actually wild-foresight-crazy-progressive, It made me wonder whether the Western Environmental Law Firm who sued Wildlife Services in Oregon for trapping beaver last year even knew about it. And it definitely seemed like time to talk about it again.
So Lake Skinner is a reservoir and recreational park in Riverside County in southern California. It has trails and a campground and a boat launch. And way back in the nineties some beavers made there way on the scene.
Now the park is part of the Riverside Country Park District, but since it is part of an important water supply, Metro Water has a hand in it too. All together they decided it wouldn’t do to have beavers taking down trees and mucking things up there. So they announced they had permits from CDFG to trap them.
There were regular users of the park who loved watching the beavers. They didn’t want them killed so they made a fuss. The park came up with a list of bogus reasons why it HAD to be done. The beavers were cutting trees and there would be no place for the Bell’s vireo to nest they argued. (Which happened to be a listed species on site), They had to kill beavers to save birds!
Well the protesters made friends and had supporters, and one of their friends just happened to be attorney Mitchell Wagner, a sole practitioner in Riverside. He wasn’t an environmental lawyer, he wasn’t a biologist. He just ‘happened’ to think this was a bad idea so he signed on to represent these Friends of Lake Skinner beavers. And just like me, since it wasn’t his field, and wasn’t something he knew anything about, he talked to a lot of folks to learn what to do next, And he read. And he listened.
Mitch cared about animals and had handled some animal welfare cases in the past. But maybe if Mitch had been a seasoned environmental attorney who was used to how all this works and the slow inches of progress one could expect he would have taken a different approach, But he was used to thinking for himself and doing things his own way. The other side was represented by the attorney generals office at the biggest firm in the area. But he was not daunted. He did what in retrospect I now realize was the most crazy and long shot thing he could possibly do.
He argued that removing beavers violated the environmental qualities act.
In his studying and talking to people Mitch learned that beavers were good for the environment, for fish and birds and water quality. And he figured if they were GOOD for the environment removing them for no reason must be bad. It made perfect sense in a crazy way, The parks department and water companies weren’t supposed to do things that were BAD for the environment. Were they?
So off they went to court. He sued the parks department, Metro water and the California Department of Fish and Game for good measure.
Late breaking. I just got an email from Mitch who read this and offered an improved paragraph saying,
“A more accurate account would be that I, as a sole practitioner, litigated the Lake Skinner beavers case against three government agencies, including the California Department of Fish & Game, out of conviction for the plight of the beavers and equal conviction in the law and my ongoing animal welfare advocacy. Indeed, as a sole practitioner, I, like the beavers, have always been accustomed to David v Goliath battles, having litigated against government agencies and large corporations.”
!!! Much better! Thanks, Mitch
It probably surprised no one when they lost their initial suit. But Mitch was a fighter and appealed. At this trial he brought in the big guns, wetlands expert Donald Hey from Chicago, and beaver expert Sherri Tippie from Colorado. Can you even believe that? This was 18 years ago. Before Ben’s book, before the nature documentary, even before Michael Pollock was releasing any salmon research.
Mitch argued that removing beavers violated CEQA and he won.
To everyone’s surprise, the appellate court ruled that the decisions weren’t justified. That they should never have trapped the beavers in the first place and that the parks department and Metro and CDFG, that they had caused the lawsuit with their actions and would have to pay all his attorney fees and the expert witness fees.
More than fifty thousand dollars! Not to mention the time and attorney hours they had to spend trying to fight it.
To this day there are still occasional beavers in Lake Skinner. And this was such a wild unbelievable outcome, that it was never tried again as far as I know. Even thought it’s still true that removing beavers hurts the environment, No environmental attorney was crazy enough to argue that.
It took Mitch,
Because sometimes you have to be out of your element to do something that’s never been done before. Which we in Martinez know first hand.
If you haven’t read this yet, you really should.
