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Alex Merritt is a partner in the Real Estate, Energy, Land Use & Environmental Practice Group in the firm's San Francisco office.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, South Pacific Division, has issued its “Final 2015 Regional Compensatory Mitigation and Monitoring Guidelines.”

The Guidelines will apply in the Corps’ San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque districts, which together cover California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Texas.Continue Reading Corps Issues New Compensatory Mitigation Guidelines for California

People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; et. al., (11/05/14, 2:13-cv-00278-DB)

In a significant Endangered Species Act case, the Utah District Court has ruled that Congress may not regulate take of the threatened Utah prairie dog, a purely intrastate species, on non-federal land. The court found that the challenged regulation went beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause because it was a non-economic regulation and the take of prairie dog does not have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.Continue Reading District Court Strikes Down Regulation of Purely Intrastate Species on Private Land