When a group of Wyoming ranchers gathered in a barn in 1973 to talk about what strip mining was doing to their land, water, and way of life, they were not building a gubernatorial résumé. Out of that meeting came the Powder River Basin Resource Council, an organization that still describes itself as a citizen-based group focused on land, water, agriculture, and "responsible development." The Barlow family was part of that founding story. Bill Barlow and the family became part of the organization’s public identity.
That history gives Eric Barlow a real environmental pedigree. But in 2026, Wyoming voters are entitled to ask what that pedigree actually means now. Because what began as a local landowner movement did not remain a simple story about ranchers, wildlife, and stewardship for long. Over time, the network surrounding PRBRC grew into something more organized, more ideological, and more openly adversarial to large-scale fossil-fuel development.
More Than “Responsible Development”
Eric Barlow was raised in a ranch family that tied stewardship to politics. The Sierra Club profile often cited in telling the Barlow family story presents Bill and Bernie Barlow not as absolutists, but as ranchers who wanted development done "responsibly."
But that phrase does a lot of work in this story.
Because the public record shows that PRBRC’s orbit is not merely a collection of fence-mending conservationists asking energy companies to be careful. It includes litigation, regulatory fights, coordinated advocacy, and connections to regional and national groups that are openly hostile to fossil-fuel expansion. Public filings from Tides Foundation’s amended 2022 Form 990 show grants that year to Earthjustice, the Powder River Basin Resource Council, and the Western Organization of Resource Councils - three groups that all intersect in the advocacy network surrounding the Barlow family’s environmental activities.
That does not prove the Tides Foundation "created" PRBRC, and it would be sloppy to claim more than the record supports. But it does show that PRBRC is not standing alone as some isolated Wyoming landowner outfit. It sits inside a broader grant-funded advocacy ecosystem that includes regional organizing and national environmental litigation.
Before readers get too comfortable with the phrase "responsible development," they should understand the larger context: this is not just a story about caring for the land; but it is also about organized opposition to how energy development is pursued, where it is pursued, and in many cases whether it proceeds at all.
The Family Creed Behind the Pedigree
Bill Barlow’s role in founding PRBRC is important because it places Eric Barlow inside one of the best-known landowner-environmental organizations in Wyoming.
His mother, Bernie Barlow, became far more than a quiet ranch wife worried about water and grazing. The Sierra Club profile describes her as a leader in PRBRC, someone involved in hearings, letters, lobbying, organizing, and surface-owner protection fights. That means Eric Barlow was not raised around vague sentimentality about open spaces. He was raised around advocacy.
Barlow’s sister, according to a June 2001 article in High Country News,
“Michele Barlow is director of Environmental Quality and Justice for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. She grew up outside Gillette on her family’s 18,000-acre ranch. Her parents, Bill and Bernie Barlow, helped found the Powder River Basin Resource Council in the 1970s to control coal development in Wyoming. “I was raised in the trenches,” she said.”
If his sister was “raised in the trenches,” it also means her brother was too. (Click Here for Full PDF)
In the same 2001 piece, there’s also a reference, unrelated to this article, to now Governor Mark Gordon: he spends his time ranching near Buffalo “when he isn’t fighting coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin.”
The Barlow ranch itself is presented in the Sierra Club profile as the moral center of the family worldview. But even that story is more ideological than it first appears. What the profile frames as inheritance, stewardship, and duty also became a political framework - one in which development was not merely negotiated, but challenged through agencies, hearings, public pressure, and eventually litigation.
And Eric Barlow is not just adjacent to that history. He is part of it. The record does not show a man who merely absorbed family values by osmosis. It shows someone who actively stepped into the advocacy world his family helped build.
From PRBRC to Federal Court
That becomes unmistakable in the early 2000s.
In July 2002, Earthjustice announced that Wyoming ranchers and landowner groups had entered a federal court fight over coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin. Earthjustice said it represented the Wyoming Outdoor Council, the Powder River Basin Resource Council, NRDC, and Defenders of Wildlife in litigation over coalbed methane development and its water impacts. Eric Barlow was quoted by name, warning that gas companies could ruin what his family had spent generations protecting.
That matters for a simple reason: it ties Eric Barlow, PRBRC, and Earthjustice together in the same legal fight - not by rumor, not by innuendo, but in Earthjustice’s own words.
The following year, in October 2003, testimony was submitted to the U.S. House Resources Committee on Barlow’s behalf through the Western Organization of Resource Councils. In that statement, he was presented not only as a rancher and veterinarian, but as a voice for both WORC and PRBRC in arguing that oil, gas, and coalbed methane companies needed to be restrained so that landowners were not steamrolled in the name of development.
That is not passive inheritance. That is participation.
The Advocacy Network Around the Barlow Orbit
And this is where the story gets broader than one ranch family.
WORC today is not simply a loose coalition of Western landowners worried about split-estate conflicts. It is a regional advocacy organization with an explicit political and cultural framework. WORC states that its board adopted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement in 2019 "to guide our policy and planning."
WORC has also published a statement declaring that it "stands with the Black Lives Matter movement" and urging members and supporters to put "time, energy, and money" into that cause and related efforts.
Those are not stray side notes. They tell readers that the network tied to Barlow’s political roots is operating inside a much broader ideological framework than many Wyoming voters likely imagine when they hear the old story about ranchers meeting in a barn to protect land and water.
Then there is Earthjustice.
Earthjustice says plainly that its work is aimed at advancing a 100% clean energy future and ending fossil-fuel extraction and use. Its clean-energy materials describe fossil fuels as a barrier to be broken down, say the organization is working to "spur a clean energy transition," and explicitly list among its goals "End fossil fuels extraction & use."
So let’s just say it plainly: Earthjustice opposes Wyoming’s coal, oil, and gas economy. So does the wider advocacy world in which PRBRC and WORC operate. These organizations may use words like stewardship and responsibility, but the public record shows they are frequently aligned against fossil-fuel expansion itself.
This is the organization that Eric Barlow chose to help with his family's litigation.
Not Just Local Stewardship
That national alignment is not abstract.
In 2022, WORC announced the end of its lawsuit against the Department of Energy over the National Coal Council and explicitly stated that it had been represented by Democracy Forward and Earthjustice. WORC credited the litigation with helping force changes at DOE after the council was dissolved and replaced.
That is important because it shows that the network connected to Barlow’s political pedigree moved well beyond local stewardship disputes years ago. It has operated in national litigation over coal policy itself.
And that matters even more because Earthjustice is involved in present-day legal fights against parts of President Trump’s energy agenda. On March 3, 2026, Earthjustice announced a lawsuit challenging the Bull Mountains coal mine expansion in Montana, calling Trump’s claimed energy emergency a "sham." Earthjustice has also challenged Trump administration efforts to keep certain coal plants operating longer, framing those moves as unlawful attempts to prop up dirty and expensive coal generation.
These are not dusty disputes from decades ago. These are current legal fights over coal, permitting, and fossil-fuel policy under the present administration.
Why This Matters for Wyoming Voters
That is why Eric Barlow’s family history is not just biography. It is a governance question.
The issue is not whether the Barlows cared about land, water, and ranch life. The issue is whether the movement they helped build remained a practical stewardship effort, or whether it evolved into a more ideological and institutionalized opposition to energy development. The public record suggests the latter is at least part of the story.
The record of the PRBRC, the Barlow family and their radical environmental associations should concern Wyoming voters.
A governor is not being elected to narrate family lore. A governor is being elected to make decisions in a state whose economy is still anchored by coal, oil, gas, pipelines, mineral access, and permitting fights. If a Governor Eric Barlow faced a clash between Wyoming’s energy economy and the litigation strategies of the advocacy groups long tied to his political roots, voters deserve to know where he would stand.
Would he align with Trump-era efforts to expand coal development? Or would it be with the organizations that have spent years trying to slow, condition, or stop such development through courtrooms, agencies, and advocacy campaigns?
Those are fair questions. They are central questions.
The Real Tension Beneath the Story
This history is also more complicated than a neat morality tale about virtuous ranchers versus greedy industry.
As reporting on the Barlow Ranch litigation makes clear, the dispute in Barlow Ranch, Limited Partnership v. Greencore Pipeline Company was not only a simple question of banning development altogether. It was a fight over access, compensation, leverage, and legal terms across private land.
That matters because it points to the real tension underneath the Barlow story. Is Eric Barlow’s governing philosophy one of responsible development? One of landowner leverage shaped by environmental litigation? Or is it some blend of all three that he has not yet clearly explained?
Wyoming voters should not have to guess.
There are clear signs of what a Barlow administration might look like. His legislative record gives him enough pro-energy votes to campaign as a friend of coal, oil and gas. However, many of those measures still run through the language of carbon capture, low-carbon compliance, mitigation systems and state managed oversight rather than unapologetic production first policies.
For voters who reject carbon-capture politics altogether, bills like SF0042 from 2024 are not reassuring evidence of Barlow’s “pro-energy leadership” so much as they are evidence of Wyoming’s managed-energy establishment at work. 2024 SF0042, which Barlow voted for, mandates that coal producing companies implement expensive carbon mitigating measures. Over his 13 years in the Wyoming legislature, there are many other examples, this is just one.
Questions Barlow Should Answer Plainly
Before Wyoming hands Eric Barlow the governor’s office, he should be asked directly:
Does he support or oppose Earthjustice’s current lawsuits against Trump-era coal and energy actions?
If the federal government moves to expand Powder River Basin coal development, would he defend that expansion as governor, or align more closely with the legal strategies that have challenged similar efforts elsewhere?
Does he agree with the DEI and Black Lives Matter positions publicly embraced by WORC, the same network that testified on his behalf before Congress?
And when he says "responsible development," what does that mean in practice for Wyoming? More lawsuits? More regulatory leverage? More obstacles for coal, oil, and gas? Or clear support for the industries that still anchor the state’s economy?
That question should come much earlier in this conversation, not at the end after readers have already been lulled by the softer language of stewardship.
It Didn’t Stay in the Barn
What began in a barn in 1973 did not stay there.
It moved into hearing rooms, courtrooms, advocacy networks, federal agencies, and national litigation. It attached itself to organizations that now speak the language of DEI, Black Lives Matter activism, clean-energy transition, and the end of fossil-fuel extraction. PRBRC may have begun with ranchers defending home, but the record shows that the world around it grew into something much larger - and much more political - than a local dispute over land and water.
Eric Barlow’s family helped start that story. Now that he wants to lead Wyoming, voters have every right to ask where that story leads next.