Each year, Audubon Florida recognizes a conservation champion for their contributions to the River of Grass with our Everglades Champion Award.

This year’s 2021 Everglades Champion Award honoree is Richard Grosso, who has used the law to advocate for the Everglades since 1990.  As a lawyer and former Executive Director and General Counsel for Everglades Law Center, Inc., Grosso has provided legal, strategic, and policy advice to dozens of organizations and individuals working to restore the Everglades. Most recently, he has joined with Tropical Audubon Society to challenge the sprawl-inducing proposal to extend the 836 expressway in Miami-Dade County across conservation lands needed for Everglades Restoration.

Biography

Richard Grosso, President of Richard Grosso, P.A., in Plantation, Fla., is a widely recognized environmental public interest lawyer and advocate, with 35 years of experience as a litigator, appellate lawyer, advocate, and counselor in the areas of federal and Florida environmental, land use, constitutional, property rights and related governmental and administrative law. He offers services throughout Florida and in Washington DC. 

Mr. Grosso has served as a Law Professor at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Executive Director and General Counsel of the Everglades Law Center, Inc., Legal Director for 1000 Friends of Florida, and attorney for the Florida departments of Community Affairs and Environmental Regulation. Over a 34 –year litigation and appellate career, he represented numerous public interest clients and the state of Florida in federal and state administrative and judicial proceedings. He frequently appears before local governments, state and federal agencies, and other bodies concerning land use and environmental issues.

Mr. Grosso has successfully litigated many significant and precedent setting casesin the areas of federal and state environmental permitting, land use planning and development, and property rights. He has also authored numerous publications on, and speaks and lectures extensively about, these and related legal and policy issues. In recent years, Mr. Grosso’s work has focused on climate and ecosystem sustainability legal and policy issues. Richard’s work and analysis has been quoted or referenced in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Forbes, Politico, National and Florida Public Radio, in almost every major news media in Florida, and other newspapers and blogs across the country and around the world.

Click here to learn more about Richard Grosso.