Environmental law conference to mark 25 years.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

It started small 25 years ago: 15 speakers and about 75 environmental lawyers, law students and activists packed into a few lecture rooms at the old University of Oregon law school building. Today it's an international event that attracts thousands.

The annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference celebrates its anniversary next week with an impressive roster of keynote speakers, films and four days of panel discussions of dizzying variety.

While the conference allows environmental activists and lawyers to share information and strategies, it also offers interested citizens the opportunity to learn about issues as diverse as wave energy and urban community gardens.

But 25 years ago, it began as a way of exposing young law students to the area of public interest law, said UO law professor John Bonine, who helped organize the first event with fellow professor Mike Axline and students Jay Manning and Bob Irvine.

Just 3 percent of environmental lawyers work in public interest law, often for small firms challenging business, industry and the federal government to follow environmental laws, Bonine said.

Another 2 percent to 3 percent work for the government, with the rest employed by business and industry, he said. Bonine and Axline wanted students to meet working public interest lawyers. And they wanted the working lawyers to be able to connect with one another, he said.

"That imbalance is so great that public interest lawyers needed a way of meeting each other, of finding someone else who has confronted the same problems," he said.

The conference has grown over the years, expanding from a one-day session to four days with hundreds of panels and speakers. It has spawned similar conferences around the country and has been a seedbed for new efforts.

The Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide - a Eugene-based nonprofit organization that connects lawyers around the world - became a reality after international lawyers at the conference decided they needed to create a network that could serve the same purpose.

In the mid-1990s a group of activists from Tanzania went home from the conference with $1,100 in donations from Eugene. Today, they're a public interest law firm with a $250,000 annual budget, Bonine said.

The conference is organized by law school students who are members of the student association Land Air Water.

The biggest draw of the four-day event that begins on Thursday is the opening address by Robert Kennedy Jr. and Vandana Shiva.

Kennedy is a lead attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and for Hudson Riverkeeper, and a professor at the Pace University school of law's environmental litigation program.

Shiva - physicist, ecologist, author and activist - is world renowned for her work on social and environmental justice. She's the reason PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" is sending a camera crew to the conference, according to Bonine.

Registration for the opening address is full, but overflow seating in a nearby room where the event will be broadcast is still available, organizers said.

Winona LaDuke, an American Indian and former vice presidential candidate whose foundation Honor the Earth works on environmental and energy policy issues, will speak on March 4.

But the panels - 108 of them this year - are the heart of the conference, and they span a global range of topics.

Some are esoteric, such as effective use of expert witnesses in environmental cases or legal strategies to fight negative effects of genetic engineering.

Others have a broader focus, such as the drive to convert old railroad rights of way to recreational trails, and building resilient communities in the era of climate change.

Eugene environmental lawyer Dave Bahr said the conference helps re-energize him. He first attended in 1987 when, as a UO law student, he was second-guessing his career path.

"I needed my batteries charged," he said. "I had started wondering what the heck I was doing in law school and it ended up being one of those cathartic moments. ... I was surrounded by a lot of people challenging my thoughts, forcing me to rethink a lot of my assumptions and motivated to find windmills to tilt at. It helped get me through law school."

Now Bahr, who works at the nonprofit Western Environmental Law Center, frequently speaks at the conference.

Registration is open to the public with a suggested donation of between $20 and $50.

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CONFERENCE

March 1-4 at the University of Oregon

Registration: online at www.pielc.org

Complete schedule: can be found online at www.pielc.org/