Editors' Summary: Since the early 1970s, environmental issues in this country have changed significantly. Moreover, the passage of time has resulted in the institutionalization of the once-new ideas. New environmental agencies now oversee substantial proportions of the federal budget. Environmental impact assessment, once seen in some quarters as a procedural impediment, is now a respected method of analyzing developmental impacts and has been imported by otherr countries for their own use. But the environmental laws are more than just the existence of new agencies and new legislation: they require strategies for effective enforcement. In this Article, the federal government's approach to criminal enforcement of those laws is analyzed and compared to civil strategies. The author reviews the development of criminal enforcement, which began much later than its civil counterpart for the same statutes, and lays out the factors that are considered relevant in environmental cases for determining which avenue to pursue.