Professional Background

Professor Blumm is one of the architects of the Law School's acclaimed Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. He has been teaching, writing, and practicing in the environmental and natural resources law field for thirty years. He came to the law school in 1978 after practicing with an environmental group and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., where he helped draft the EPA's wetland protection regulations. Initially, he was a Natural Resources Law Fellow; he was appointed to the faculty the following year. Professor Blumm's chief interests are in the restoration of the Pacific Northwest salmon runs, the preservation of the West’s public lands and waters, the management of natural resources by Indian tribes, and governmental authority to regulate private property for public purposes.

For over a decade, Blumm edited the Natural Resources Law Institute's Anadromous Fish Law Memo. More recently, he spent seven years co-directing, with Professor Janet Neuman, the Northwest Water Law and Policy Project. He is a prolific scholar, with nearly one-hundred articles, book chapters, and monographs on salmon, water, public lands, wetlands, environmental impact assessment, public trust law, and constitutional takings law, to name just a few subjects. His most recent articles concern the effect of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinions on environmental law, Oregon's compensation scheme for land use regulations, the enforceability of federal land use plans, and judicial supervision of Columbia Basin salmon restoration efforts. Ongoing projects include an article on the habitat protection implicit in 19th century Indian treaties and a treatise on public trust law, co-authored with University of Oregon professor Mary Wood.

In 1992 and 1993, Dartmouth Publishing and New York University Press published Blumm’s anthology on environmental law, and his 2002 book on salmon law and policy, Sacrificing the Salmon (http://www.powells. com/biblio/1-9075228252- 0), met with critical acclaim. Professor Blumm is co-author of the first casebook on Native American Natural Resources Law, originally published in 2002 and now in its second edition. He is author of two chapters in the Waters and Water Rights treatise (on reserved water rights and the Columbia River Basin), teaches the only course in the country on Pacific Salmon Law, and designed and taught the first course on Native American Natural Resources Law. He works closely with students: over a recent two-year period, twelve of his students published articles, many of whom were his co-authors.

Blumm was visiting professor at the University of Melbourne in 1988, Fulbright Professor at the University of Athens in 1991, and visiting professor at the University of California-Berkeley in 2004. He has lectured on a variety of topics in Australia, Canada, and Brazil and has been a distinguished visitor at Florida State University and the University of Calgary. He also also served as a board member of WaterWatch of Oregon and American Rivers Northwest. In 2005-07, Blumm was Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Natural Resources Law Section.