Opening the Door to a Life of Conservation Leadership

When people ask how I ended up as Senior Land Steward at the Jackson Hole Land Trust—working to protect wildlife habitat and working agricultural lands across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the last intact ecosystems on the planet—I tell them the story starts in Baraboo, Wisconsin, in a small ALF office next to a bakery on the southeast side of the courthouse square, with four staff members and one very determined young fellow trying to figure out what it meant to be a conservationist.

That fellow was me, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation changed everything.

My fellowship was, at its core, an incubation. The land ethic isn’t something you read about and immediately possess—it’s something you have to sit with, test against experience, and gradually internalize. ALF gave me the conditions to do exactly that. Living at the Potter Preserve cabin in the Baraboo Hills, with no television, primitive internet, and a deep stand of woods outside the window, I had something increasingly rare: time to think. I read twenty-five books over the course of my fellowship. I cut firewood. I explored the woodlands and stream courses. I listened to the raging flood waters in the ephemeral creek behind the house and began to understand, in a felt rather than merely intellectual way, what it means to be a plain member of the land community.

The work itself was equally formative. Collecting seed, learning to identify prairie plant species—both common and rare—and developing a genuine love for deep-rooted forbs and grasses was joyful and grounding. Prescribed fire introduced me to one of land stewardship’s most powerful tools. And working alongside landowners on prairie restoration taught me that conservation is relational: it happens through trust, patience, and shared commitment to a place.

But it was the mentorship that left the deepest mark. Nina Leopold Bradley welcomed me to her table for lunch with a generosity that still moves me. Buddy Huffaker and Steve Swenson modeled what it looks like when passionate, mission-driven people are wholly invested in their work. The board members I met expanded my sense of what was possible in conservation leadership. And I will never forget watching Charlie Bradley’s face light up after we wrapped a prescribed burn of “Charlie’s Prairie”—his smile was completely genuine, entirely present. It was a moment of pure connection between a man and the land he had spent a lifetime caring for, and it crystallized something for me about why this work matters.

The ALF fellowship also opened doors in ways I continue to benefit from more than two decades later. The Leopold name carries real weight across the conservation world—among practitioners and academics, within the western agricultural community, among government agencies and advocates and teachers and students. Mentioning that I spent time at the Aldo Leopold Foundation signals something to people, even when they don’t know the organization’s full story. That cachet helped carry me into graduate school, into subsequent positions, and ultimately to the work I do today in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

I keep a stack of A Sand County Almanac on my desk and give copies away like candy. Every new coworker gets one. Every summer seasonal I hire is encouraged to spend serious time with the land ethic section. That’s not obligation—it’s conviction. I believe, because ALF showed me, that Leopold’s vision is as urgent and alive today as it was when he wrote it.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation did something rare for me as a young person: it gave me a foundation. A way of seeing. A community of people who care, deeply, about the same things. I am grateful every day for that gift, and I try to pass it forward at every opportunity.

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Check out the extraordinary 2001 Leopold Foundation Fellows: Amy Martin, Jeffery Voltz, Josh LaPointe

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