Mountain States Legal Foundation

This article is part of the Center for Media & Democracy's spotlight on front groups and corporate spin.

The Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), a non-profit conservative legal foundation, was founded in 1976 with initial funding of $250,000. from Joseph Coors. James Watt, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, served as MSLF's founding president. BLM Acting director William Perry Pendley was president and chief legal officer of the group 1989-2019.

MSLF files cases and amicus curiae briefs attacking environmental protections and designations on behalf of oil, mineral, development and timber interests. MSLF is active in the "wise use" and property rights movement. Over the past two decades, MSLF has served as a training ground for a number of attorneys most active in the anti-environmental movement. [1]

Documents Contained at the Anti-Environmental Archives

Documents written by or referencing this person or organization are contained in the Anti-Environmental Archive, launched by Greenpeace on Earth Day, 2015. The archive contains 3,500 documents, some 27,000 pages, covering 350 organizations and individuals. The current archive includes mainly documents collected in the late 1980s through the early 2000s by The Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR), an organization that tracked the rise of the so called "Wise Use" movement in the 1990s during the Clinton presidency. Access the index to the Anti-Environmental Archives here.

Contact Information

Mountain States Legal Foundation 1999
2596 South Lewis Way
Lakewood, Colorado 80227
(303) 292-2021
https://mslegal.org