Law and Environment & Natural Resources

Temple Stoellinger, Law & Haub School (B.S. Environment and Natural Resources and Communications, University of Wyoming; J.D. with honors, University of Wyoming College of Law).  Professor Stoellinger is an Assistant Professor in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources with a joint appointment at the College of Law where she is also the Co-Director of the Center for Law and Energy Resources in the Rockies.  Professor Stoellinger also oversees the Haub School’s JD/MA program, a joint master’s degree offered in collaboration with the Law School and she is also a faculty fellow with the School of Energy Resources new Center for Energy Regulation and Policy Analysis. Professor Stoellinger’s work and engagements continue to have a direct and impactful benefit to the State of Wyoming. During the fall 2019 semester she taught the following courses: Environment and Natural Resource Law and Policy (ENR 4750/5750), and Environment and Natural Resource Problem Solving (ENR 5000). During the spring 2020 semester she taught Wildlife Law for the first time, which was offered to graduate students and law students; as well as a seminar course for JD/MA students on interdisciplinary thesis writing. Professor Stoellinger’s scholarship continues to focus on natural resource law and policy, with an emphasis on wildlife law and policy including the Endangered Species Act. Highlights of her scholarship this past year include the completion of an interdisciplinary law review article focusing the need for the integration of ecology and economics into big game migration policy, written in collaboration with two economists at the University of Wyoming (Dr. Jo Albers and Dr. Jason Shogren) as well as Dr. Arthur Middleton, a big game ecologist at the University of California at Berkley. Again, working with Dr. Middleton, Professor Stoellinger contributed to an interdisciplinary paper entitled Harnessing Visitors’ Enthusiasm for National Parks to Fund Cooperative Large-Landscape Conservation, an article that explores opportunities to capture additional visitor revenue from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park visitors to fund conservation efforts in the area. She was also the lead author of a law review article entitled Improving Cooperate State and Federal Species Conservation that was the end product of a 2019 Haub School workshop on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that Professor Stoellinger organized at the University of Wyoming in collaboration with Texas A&M University. The workshop featured key ESA experts from across the country, who were invited to discuss the state-federal relationships with regards to species conservation as well as opportunities for state to engage more meaningfully in species conservation efforts. This law review article features the agreements in principle reached by the workshop participants and through significant outreach efforts, it is hoped that this workshop and law review article help to positively influence the implementation of the ESA. As a spin-off from this effort, Professor Stoellinger is currently working on a project to examine the effectiveness of ESA section 4(d), a unique and flexible policy tool embedded within the ESA. Working with Rebecca Watson, the president of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, Professor Stoellinger completed an eBibliography on the National Environmental Policy Act, intended to be a helpful resource to attorneys and NEPA practitioners. As co-director of CLERR, Professor Stoellinger’s main effort was the organization of the 2019 Landscape Discussion on Energy Law and Policy in the Rockies, which was attended by 200 participants and covered the following topics: The Energy Transition: The Disparate Roles, Impacts and Influences of Federal and State Law and Regulation, Hop Topics in Oil and Gas, and Legal Uncertainty in Coal Country. As a faculty fellow with SER’s new Center for Energy Regulation and Policy Analysis, Professor Stoellinger is currently working on a law review article with other SER colleagues examining coal plant retirement polices in western states.