Defending National Forests Under Trump 2.0
What have the first 100 days of the second Trump administration meant for National Forests in Oregon and across the country?
On May 6, expert panelists from Earthjustice, Crag Law Center and Advocates for the West will join Central Oregon LandWatch to examine this administration’s motivations and explain how the environmental justice community is pushing back against questionable, dangerous or illegal moves.
Our guest presenter, Jeremy Orr, Director of Litigation and Advocacy Partnerships at Earthjustice, will provide a national perspective. Orr will be joined by attorneys Meriel Darzen, from Crag Law Center, and Lizzy Potter, from Advocates for the West, who will focus on policies and proposals for Pacific Northwest national forests.
LandWatch’s Wild Lands and Waters Program Director Jeremy Austin will moderate the panel.
UPCOMING WEBINAR
100 Days In: Defending National Forests Under Trump 2.0
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM Pacific Time
via Zoom | Free | Register
Co-sponsored by the Eastside Forests Coalition, this webinar is open to anyone with an interest in environmental law and policy.
Registration is free, with contributions welcome. Questions generated by participants during the registration process will help set the event’s course.
Along with fielding questions from attendees, these seasoned environmental advocates will highlight key ways that individuals who aren’t lawyers can engage in environmental justice.
MEET THE PRESENTERS
ENVIRONMENTAL ATTORNEYS WORKING FOR A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT AND KEEPING COMMUNITIES SAFE FROM HARM
Jeremy Orr, Director of Litigation and Advocacy Partnerships, Earthjustice
Lizzy Potter, Staff Attorney,
Advocates for the West
Meriel Darzen, Senior Staff Attorney, Crag Law Center
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Jeremy Orr helps Earthjustice’s offices, programs, and departments build strategies to deeply engage and genuinely partner with communities and other stakeholders.
Prior to joining Earthjustice, Jeremy served as a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council where he focused on drinking water and source water protection issues, working to ensure that all people have access to safe, sufficient, and affordable drinking water. Immediately before that, Jeremy worked for Peoples Climate Movement as the director of state programs, building and mobilizing coalitions across more than 20 states in pursuit of climate justice.
With a background in community organizing and community lawyering, Jeremy has also served as the director of organizing for Interfaith Worker Justice, an environmental justice attorney for the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic, the executive director of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, and a lead community organizer with the Gamaliel Foundation.
A former two-sport collegiate student-athlete in football and track, Jeremy earned his B.S., M.S., and law degree all from Michigan State University.
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Since joining Advocates for the West in 2015, Lizzy Potter’s work has stretched from the coast of California to the western slope of Colorado and from the northern border in Washington to the southern border in Arizona. Her current docket focuses on protecting special places like national conservation areas, reducing the harmful impacts of federal dam operations, and challenging oil and gas decisions. She is committed to remedying historic inequities and injustices stemming from the conservation field and helps to lead efforts at Advocates for the West to do so.
Before joining Advocates for the West, she was an associate attorney at a Seattle-based public interest law firm, where she worked on federal citizen suits, state permit challenges, land use appeals, and open government disputes involving clean water, wildlife, and fossil fuel issues.
Lizzy graduated from Lewis and Clark Law School, where she also received an LL.M in Environmental & Natural Resources Law, and earned her B.A. from Denison University in Environmental Studies. A Bend resident, she loves exploring high desert landscapes and the Deschutes River basin.
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At Crag Law Center, Meriel Darzen’s docket primarily consists of litigating public lands and forest issues in Federal court, and supporting local community groups on rural land use issues at the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA).
Before joining Crag, Meriel was a staff attorney with 1000 Friends of Oregon, litigating cases on farmland, forest, and wildlife protection across Oregon, and, prior to that, she practiced civil litigation and land use law in Bend. As a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic, she helped construct a fruit tree nursery.
She earned a law degree and an MS in forest resource from the University of Washington, and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University. Originally from the Boston area, Meriel has lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest for fifteen years, and enjoys trail running, backcountry snowboarding and vegetable gardening.
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