Silvix Resources is a nonprofit environmental law firm with more than 20 years of experience in federal forest law, policy, and collaboration with a mission of using those tools to advance the conservation, restoration, and stewardship of western public lands.
About Silvix
Located in Oregon and founded in 2023, Silvix Resources is a nonprofit environmental law firm with more than 20 years of experience in federal forest law, policy, and collaboration with a mission of using those tools to advance the conservation, restoration, and stewardship of western public lands.
Susan Jane M. Brown is Principal of Silvix Resources. Her primary focus of litigation is federal public lands forest management, but her practice includes cases involving the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, and other land management statutes including the Oregon and California Lands Act. Susan Jane’s policy portfolio includes federal land management planning, wildfire risk reduction and mitigation, appropriations, wildlife conservation, and Indigenous co-management of federal lands, among other issues.
Our Services
Federal Forest Litigation
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Silvix specializes in federal forest litigation, representing conservation organizations, allied individuals, and Tribal interests in federal court involving issues such as federal land management planning, forest and wildfire management, wildlife conservation, and aquatic resource protection.Silvix regularly appears in federal district and appellate courts and has deep experience with numerous federal environmental laws including the National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Oregon and California Lands Act, Administrative Procedure Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
A growing aspect of Silvix’s legal work involves providing legal technical assistance to Pacific Northwest Tribes that centers Tribal sovereignty and indigenous self-sufficiency in natural resources management and beyond.
Click here to learn more about Silvix’s litigation.
Federal & State Forest Policy
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Silvix is engaged in numerous forest policy matters at the federal and Oregon state levels, including wildfire, wildlife, and land management issues. Leveraging more than 20 years of policy expertise, Silvix works with allied organizations and individuals to ensure that bedrock environmental laws and the best available science guide federal land management, and that decision makers are well informed about the ecological, social, and legal effects of policy options.Silvix supports and advocates for Tribal co-managementand co-stewardship of federal lands, Indigenous cultural burning, and other policies and practices that recognize and respect the innate sovereignty of Tribal nations.
Click here to learn more about Silvix’s policy work.
Collaborative Conservation
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Silvix believes that collaboration–bringing diverse stakeholders together in pursuit of shared socioeconomic and ecological goals–is often the best way to solve complex land management challenges. Silvix has been engaged in collaborative conservation in eastern Oregon for more than two decades, work that has drawn national and international attention.To truly be effective, collaborative conservation must engage Tribes and Indigenous peoples and practices, braiding traditional ecological knowledge with western scientific approaches to land management to conserve treaty and other natural resources.
Click here learn more about Silvix’s collaborative conservation.
Silvix Theory of Change
As our docket of work suggests, Silvix believes that there is no one way to best conserve, restore, and steward western public lands: instead, multiple tools and approaches are necessary, especially in an era of climate and biodiversity instability. Litigation is an excellent tool for stopping “bad” things from happening, but it is a poor tool to encourage “good” things to happen: thus, policy and collaboration are necessary and complimentary tools to robust judicial enforcement of bedrock environmental laws.
The role of science in legal, policy, and collaborative decision making is similarly important: use of the best available science in land management is essential to avoid the mistakes of the past and to ensure that federal forests are responsibly stewarded for future generations. Likewise, for too long western land managers have ignored the role that Indigenous peoples have played in shaping federal forests since time immemorial, and the federal government has shamefully disregarded its treaty and trust obligations owed to Tribes.
It is past time for the federal government to authentically step in to co-management and co-stewardship with Tribes of “public” lands, even though this will be controversial with the dominant settler-colonial paradigm: it is time to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Indeed, that is where Silvix’s best work occurs, at the intersection of what is and what is possible.