The Environmental Law Institute was pleased to organize a series of free lectures in Washington, DC, to provide an introduction to the legal foundations of environmental protection in the United States. Summer law clerks, interns, and others who wanted to acquire a working knowledge of the basics were invited to attend. Each presentation was made by an experienced practitioner and provided an overview of the history, main provisions, and essential vocabulary of the specific statute.
John Kostyack (National Wildlife Federation) spoke at the final 2003 ELI Summer School session on the Endangered Species Act.
Mr. Kostyack manages the Federation’s Species Conservation program, which employs lobbying, litigation and public education and outreach to protect and restore endangered species and other imperiled wildlife. He is Senior Counsel in the National Wildlife Federation’s Washington, DC office and provides legal counsel for NWF and other environmental groups in several legal initiatives, including a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s role in encouraging sprawl-type development in the last remaining habitat of the critically-endangered Florida panther. Recently he secured a major legal victory for an environmental coalition in Sacramento, CA, that sets a national precedent concerning regional habitat conservation planning under the Endangered Species Act.