Meet three of our lawyers fighting the climate and extinction crises

Bruce Lindsay, our Senior Specialist Lawyer, has experience in planning, water, biodiversity, and environment protection law and policy.

He has written, advocated and run cases on matters as diverse as native vegetation clearing and offsets, indigenous water rights, threatened species management, urban rivers, and environmental democracy.

Bruce and his team support traditional owners, the Tati Tati people from northwest Victoria, to achieve water justice.

EJA supported the Tati Tati traditional owners to establish legal pathways and provided media support in advocacy for “cultural flows” at Margooya Lagoon, a culturally significant wetland, near Robinvale in Victoria on the heavily-regulated Murray River.

“Settler’s law and policy is fragmented and complex and does not conform easily to Aboriginal lore and custom. Legal and policy mechanisms are available to deliver cultural flows, but they need to be put into practice.”

Climate Lawyer Brittni Dienhoff  is leading the way in legal actions to safeguard our climate.

As a lawyer in the climate team, Brittni works closely with local communities to tackle the climate crisis. Alongside her previous private practice work in climate risk, her litigation experience includes human rights law and working with First Nations communities on land rights issues.

Brittni knows that here and now, some of the loudest and most influential voices calling for action on climate are young people, and she is supporting them to leverage legal and political systems to create change.  

In the past 12 months, EJA has represented eight determined young people who want to see governments act on climate change – young people who live in cities and regional centres from youth, First Nations and disability communities. All of them face acute harm from climate change today, and all of them want action now.

Brittni has supported clients to lodge a human rights complaint with the UN and send a legal request to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

“Our clients deserve a government that is dedicated to and acts to secure a safe future, where people and nature can thrive in a stable climate, for generations to come.”

Danya Jacobs is our Special Counsel working to protect nature, halt extinction and safeguard our climate. She has a focus on public land and law that regulates government action.

Danya and her team provide community groups and citizen scientists with legal advice and representation to defend nature. They are the driving force behind our forest litigation, which to date has protected thousands of hectares of precious forest habitat.

Danya lead our case representing Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum led to landmark Federal Court rulings that VicForests had breached multiple Victorian environment protection laws and its operations were a driver of threatened species decline. It prompted Bunnings to stop selling native timber sourced by VicForests.

And our case representing Wildlife of the Central Highlands WOTCH was the first case to respond to logging in unburnt native habitat following the Black Summer bushfires and is keeping forest refuges critical to our wildlife safe from logging.

“Legal action in the Courts allows the community to hold government and industry to account if they flout the law at the expense of our threatened wildlife.”