Elijah Savage: 2023 Wyss Scholar will Focus on Connections between Land Conservation and Imperiled Species
Elijah (Eli) Savage JD ’24 was selected as one of two 2023 Lewis & Clark Wyss Scholars. He will focus on connections between land conservation and imperiled species with the Center for Biological Diversity in the summer of 2023.
Eli was born and raised in Humboldt County, CA, on California’s North Coast. He grew up camping under the redwoods and swimming in the Van Duzen River. He studied in Brazil for a year before college, where he learned Portuguese and grew to love everything Brazilian. Eli attended the University of California Santa Barbara, where he graduated with a BA in Global Studies. After college, he worked for a brief time at The Santa Barbara Foundation, where he first started to appreciate working to serve his community. He chose to study law at Lewis and Clark so that he could continue to serve his community and to focus on environmental and natural resources law.
In his first year at Lewis and Clark, Eli volunteered with the Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC), and this year he is working as a Project Coordinator for the Public Lands and Wildlife Group. Last summer Eli worked with Friends of the Eel River as they helped stop the development of a coal-hauling rail line from San Francisco to Humboldt Bay. He really enjoyed the experience and appreciated the mentorship of all the attorneys he had the opportunity to work with. He hopes to one day help encourage and guide the next generation of conservation lawyers. Eli is looking forward to working with Friends of the Eel River and other like-minded community-based environmental nonprofits after he graduates to further land conservation issues and policies.
Eli is currently working as an Extern for the Hon. Michael H. Simon at the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. He is also a Research Assistant for Prof. Robert Klonoff, working to help him update the three class action volumes of Wright & Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure. This summer Eli will clerk with the Center for Biological Diversity (Oakland, CA office) working on a variety of environmental issues with focus on the connections between land conservation and imperiled species. In his free time, Eli enjoys baking sourdough bread, watching Warrior’s basketball, and being out in nature.
He believes that the health of a community is closely tied to the health of its environment, and he hopes to help build a healthier community on California’s North Coast by working to preserve and restore the watersheds and surrounding lands that make it a special place.
Lewis & Clark Law School was selected in 2017 to be part of the Wyss Scholars Program. Funded by the Wyss Foundation, a private, charitable foundation dedicated to land conservation, the Wyss Scholars Program seeks to identify and support a new generation of leaders focused on land conservation issues. The selected Lewis & Clark Scholars will receive a $5,000 stipend for qualifying work in their 2L summer, a contribution towards tuition during 3L year, and two post- graduate payments if they are working in a qualifying position. Lewis & Clark is one of only a few law schools in the country selected for this program.
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Read GEI’s November 2025 Newsletter
Last year’s newsletter reflected on what GEI had accomplished in a “best of” moment of fun before the chaos and drama of the next administration descended on us. We never could have guessed what we were all about to face …
GEI in the news!
GEI staff attorney expressed concerns about Pacific Power’s decision to remove the Boardman to Hemingway planned transmission line from its Integrated Resource Plan. In response to a citizens’ request to revoke the certificate allowing condemnation of private property.
GEI, Sierra Club, Mobilizing Climate Action Together, and the Northwest Energy Coalition argued that the that the certificate was premised upon the transmission line’s “broad public benefits, not the needs of a single private entity.” Allowing PacifiCorp to change course would “violate the spirit and legal framework under which the line was approved by this commission,” Alex Houston, an attorney with the Green Energy Institute who represents the groups, told commissioners. It would also “harm Oregon customers and set a dangerous precedent wherein the justifications supporting issuance of a certificate may summarily be disregarded once the utility gets approval,” he said.
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