How have the courts interpreted the Indian preemption principles in the environmental context?

These decisions involve general questions of economic regulation and tribal self-sufficiency: not conservation of a precious and finite environmental resource and the state's significant interest in its regulations in furtherance of resource preservation. The first Indian preemption case to approach application of preemption principles in the environmental context was New Mexico v. Mescalero Apache Tribe, supra, and that case involved questions of general wildlife management rather than urgent questions of conserving a fixed resource of fragile survival potential.