This is a guest post from Naomi Rowden, an Equal Justice Works Summer Corps member at the Crag Law Center and law student at University of Oregon School of Law.

The Crag Law Center is a client-focused public interest environmental law center that supports community efforts to protect and sustain the natural resources of the Pacific Northwest. Through combining strategic litigation with education, advocacy and outreach, Crag enables their clients to better achieve their own missions. This unique combination serves to professionalize grassroots conservation efforts and raise the public’s perception of conservation groups. Crag works with clients throughout Oregon, Washington and Alaska in three program areas: Public Lands; Salmon, Water and Wetlands; and Livable Communities.

Crag’s education efforts include mentoring and training the next generation of public interest advocates. As part of my experience as a summer law clerk at Crag, made possible in part through participation in the Equal Justice Works Summer Corps program, I am working one-on-one with experienced environmental attorneys on landmark environmental issues.

For example, since 2007 Crag has worked with the Inupiat Eskimo community of the North Slope of Alaska to protect their traditional subsistence hunting grounds from offshore oil drilling. The Inupiat people and their ancestors have relied upon the sustainable subsistence hunt of the bowhead whale to carry on their unique traditions and culture for more than a thousand years. Today, the Inupiat people find themselves in a historic moment in time as energy policy, climate change and economic conditions converge and create increased pressure to open the Arctic Ocean to offshore oil and gas activities. Those activities directly threaten the Arctic Ocean ecosystem, the bowhead whale, and the subsistence practices that define the Inupiat way of life.

Already, Crag has succeeded in getting a court ordered injunction to prohibit drilling in the Inupiat hunting grounds, forcing oil companies to withdraw and scale back their operations in the region. Crag is committed to providing long-term legal and advocacy support in an effort to protect the bowhead whale and its habitat, with the goal of securing permanent protections for the Arctic Ocean and the subsistence practices of the Inupiat people. Working on these issues this summer has introduced me to the complex legal systems that local communities everywhere must navigate in order to protect the natural resources and cultural traditions that we all depend upon. I am honored to be able to participate in supporting this environmental justice work and grateful for the support of the Equal Justice Works Summer Corps program.