Valpo Alumnus Lowell E. Baier ’61 Receives Awards for Recent Book
Lowell’s book “Inside the Equal Access to Justice Act: Environmental Litigation and the Crippling Battle over America’s Lands, Endangered Species, and Critical Habitats” has been selected a Grand Prize Winner in over 70 categories from over 2,000 books submitted as well as the Winner in the Science/Nature/Environment category of the 2017 Next Generation INDIE Book Awards. Lowell received his awards on May 31, 2017 during a ceremony at the Harvard Club in New York City. His book has also been chosen as a 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award finalist in the two categories of Ecology/Environment and History, as well as a finalist for the Forest History Society’s Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award.
As a legal and environmental historian and one of America’s preeminent experts on environmental litigation, Lowell chronicles the century-long story of America’s resources management, focusing on litigation, citizen suit provisions, and attorneys’ fees. He provides the first book-length comprehensive examination of the little-known Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) and its role in environmental litigation, focusing on its effect on wildlife and especially endangered species.
A native son of Remington, Indiana, Lowell received his B.A. in economics and political science from Valparaiso University in 1961 and Juris Doctor from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1964. Lowell’s intellectual curiosity during his career took him from being a practicing attorney, to an entrepreneur, to a tireless advocate for natural resources and wildlife conservation, and a recognized legal and environmental historian and author. His passion for wildlife conservation and natural resource management emanated from his agrarian roots. This in turn led him early in his career to advocacy for a variety of wildlife causes and organizations, and related legislative and regulatory initiatives in Washington, D.C., of which he wrote and spoke extensively. His wildlife survey treks into Asia’s highest mountain regions moreover added an international dimension to his wildlife conservation work.
On April 25, 2016, Lowell participated in the Institute for Leadership and Service’s Pathways to Purpose Series. The title of his interview was “Reflections of an Aging Crusader.” The interview was so popular that the pamphlet prepared containing his life-long lessons remains in circulation today.
Lowell has been recognized many times for his extraordinary public service at the local level, and for his conservation work nationally. He lives in suburban Washington, D.C., and contemporaneously continues to practice law specializing in wildlife conservation and natural resource policy, legislation and regulation, manages his commercial real estate development company, and writes extensively.
