Legal Considerations for Climate Change Implications on Tribes' Off-Reservation Resources

This paper seeks to explore existing legal avenues available to tribes to protect their resources in order to prevent such an “ecological removal.” By examining legal strategies that have been used to replace both on-reservation resources and treaty-protected off-reservation resources, we gain insight into avenues for protection that may be cultivated to protect additional off-reservation resources, including traditional subsistence resources that are vulnerable to climate change. This paper was developed through the University of Oregon Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program as a result of the Tribal Climate Change Forum: The Role of Tribal Sovereignty, and Tribal Needs and Opportunities in Climate Change Policy and Action, which was held on October 15-16, 2009, at the Many Nations Longhouse, University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon.