Elijah (Eli) Savage JD ’24, one of two 2023 Lewis & Clark Wyss Scholars, will focus on connections between land conservation and imperiled species with the Center for Biological Diversity for summer 2023. The Wyss Scholars Program seeks to identify and support a new generation of leaders focused on land conservation issues. Lewis & Clark is one of only a few law schools in the country selected for this program.
Hank Shell (’24) is the other Wyss Scholar for 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. I’m 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. I’m 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.
