Drew Caputo

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Drew Caputo is Vice President of Litigation for Lands, Wildlife and Oceans, leading Earthjustice’s expansive docket of litigation to protect the nation’s public lands and cherished wild places, irreplaceable species, and ocean fisheries and habitats.

Caputo served from 2006 until February 2014 as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, California, where he investigated and prosecuted crimes involving public corruption, civil rights violations, national security matters, and other crimes. He began his legal career as an associate attorney in Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain regional office in Denver, Colorado, working on cases to protect the public lands, rivers, and endangered species of the Rocky Mountain West. He then worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council for 13 years, first in Washington, D.C., and then in San Francisco, litigating a wide range of federal environmental cases. He led the development of an oceans litigation program in NRDC’s San Francisco office.

Caputo has been the force behind numerous monumental victories for the environment. Among many other successes, his litigation won protections for overfished Pacific rockfish and led to population increases for rockfish species; stopped the extension of a set of oil and gas leases off the California coast; and ended the use of Nationwide Permit 26, an abusive regulation of the Army Corps of Engineers that was the single biggest source of permitted wetlands destruction in the United States.

In his role as Vice President of Litigation for Lands, Wildlife and Oceans at Earthjustice, Caputo leads a program that has been at the forefront of the United States’ most significant legal decisions protecting public lands, oceans, watersheds, and wildlife.