Conservation Leadership Awards

Mitch Friedman2022The impact of Mitch Friedman and the advocates he’s led at Conservation Northwest can be felt throughout the Pacific Northwest. Since starting the organization in 1989, his efforts have resulted in a healthier, more vibrant and more resilient Cascadia, creating and restoring connections for wildlife, for wild places and for the people that love their Pacific Northwest home. Mitch and his team were instrumental in securing state and federal funding to build numerous wildlife crossings across Interstate 90; that success has led to new initiatives for crossings near I-5 to link the Olympic Peninsula to the Cascade Mountains. He raised funds to purchase private ranch land and return it to the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Tribe for their stewardship. Under his leadership, CNW and the Colville Tribes are also working together to prevent potential pollution disasters from failing dams at the Copper Mountain mine in British Columbia. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Justina Ray2022Dr. Ray co-founded WCS Canada—an affiliate of the global Wildlife Conservation Society—where she serves as president and senior scientist, in 2004. The organization has become a leading resource for conservation efforts that have impacted millions of square kilometers across the country. WCS Canada strongly supports Indigenous-led conservation, and Dr. Ray has been a strong advocate for conservation through reconciliation. In recent years, WCS Canada science has had positive impacts on land-use planning throughout Canada, providing science to policymakers for critical decisions. Their work has boosted understanding of the Greater Muskwa-Kechika region, and informed protection of Nahanni National Park and the Castle Provincial Park & Castle Wildland Provincial Park. Dr. Ray served for almost a decade as a member of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, and has served on numerous governmental science advisory panels. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Fiona Schmiegelow2022As leader of the BEACONs Team (Boreal Ecosystems Analysis for Conservation Networks) and Director of the Northern Environmental and Conservation Sciences at the University of Alberta and Yukon University, Dr. Schmiegelow focuses on conducting robust research and building local capacity to inform land-use and wildlife conservation policies and practices in northern Canada. Her work includes numerous collaborations with First Nations and a wide range of other partners, and has expanded programs at UA and YukonU to strengthen relationships between researchers, students and Indigenous communities in northern Canada. Along with land-use planning, her work includes extensive support for migratory bird and caribou conservation, and she has served on many government advisory panels advancing these interests. Some of her most impactful work is in nurturing a next generation of conservation scientists who bring fresh perspective and a deeply rooted commitment to reconciliation as a foundation for their work. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Erin Dovichin2022Dovichin founded Alaska Venture Fund in 2018 to make the state a model for a sustainable future. A visionary with a love for Alaska’s wildlands and Alaska’s people, Dovichin is determined to bring people together to realize Alaska’s outsized economic and conservation opportunities, from its incredible and valuable carbon reserves to its wild salmon ecosystems, from its unparalleled outdoor recreation to its powerful Indigenous led stewardship efforts and rich cultural heritage. Alaska Venture Fund builds and advances projects in every region of the state, and is particularly committed to supporting Alaska Native leaders and Native communities to achieve their climate and conservation objectives with resources, research and knowledge exchange programs. Dovichin has played a key role in successful efforts to protect the Tongass National Forest and to defend Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble mine while building new community models of economic prosperity and stewardship rooted in Indigenous governance and self-determination. The CLA comes with a cash award for both the individual winner and the organization they represent. Since its inception, Wilburforce has recognized nearly 100 leaders with the CLA. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Jim Enote2021We are thrilled to recognize Jim Enote, who has served Native American communities for decades, as the third and final Conservation Leadership Award (CLA) honoree for 2021. Enote is a Zuni tribal member and the CEO of the Colorado Plateau Foundation (CPF), which works with tribes across the Colorado Plateau, stretching over and beyond the Four Corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Currently, the foundation prioritizes efforts to protect water, sacred places, and languages, and ensure food security. Enote said the Conservation Leadership Award was a celebration not of his own work but of the work of many who came before him, including bold Native leaders and non-Native advocates for justice and equity in the conservation field. He noted that in 1962, he encountered a whites-only restroom as a boy, which motivated him to change the asymmetries of power in the world. Today, he and his capable and serious staff, along with tribes and tribal organizations, are growing Indigenous leadership in various ways across the Southwest. He said that would be impossible without the work of countless others who came before to make inroads in conservation, politics, philanthropy, and other fields. A board chair with Grand Canyon Trust, Governing Council member of the Wilderness Society, and board member of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Enote has also served UNESCO, the U.S. National Park Service, National Geographic Society, and numerous other organizations. At CPF, he leads a majority-Native staff. "You can read books about how to lead, but CPF has a different way of managing our work. I follow what I've learned from the natural world around me, to work with nature as a team. As seeds are to soil and the way ducks understand a river's flow.” —Jim Enote CPF's slogan is we live where we serve, reinforcing CPF's unique understanding of Native communities' economic, cultural, social, and political perspectives on the Colorado Plateau. Grantees are not far-off entities but neighbors. The CLA comes with a cash award for both the individual winner and the organization they represent. Since its inception, Wilburforce has recognized nearly 100 leaders with the CLA. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Juan Carlos Bravo2021Juan Carlos has dedicated his career to preserving habitat and species across the U.S.-Mexico border. He is a pragmatic visionary who can work across cultures, who looks for and identifies solutions, and who is always guided by a deep commitment to the natural world and the people who depend on it. As Mexico Program Director for Wildlands Network, Juan Carlos works with landowners to conserve habitat on private lands, collaborates with authorities on both sides of the southern border to develop wildlife crossings, and helps policymakers understand the critical importance of habitats and keystone species across boundaries. “Wildlife knows no borders. The artificial lines between countries have real impacts on biodiversity and species survival. We need to make these lines permeable for animals. We’re humbled and grateful that the Wilburforce Foundation has supported our work on the U.S.-Mexico border.” —Juan Carlos Bravo In recent years, Juan Carlos has led efforts to identify jaguar corridors in the borderlands; to protect the Cocóspera River from highway development; to protect in perpetuity a half million acres in the Sky Islands region of the Bavispe Natural Protected Area; and to make wildlife crossings mandatory for roads throughout the state of Sonora. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Megan Seibel2021Megan Seibel’s strategic thinking and considerable management skills and experience have served TREC and Wilburforce   grantees well since she joined TREC in 2005 and became executive director in 2015. Megan’s focus on growing and nurturing TREC’s top-notch staff of 13; creating innovative programs and client services; leading TREC’s internal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative; and her stalwart support to our grantees during the unprecedented challenges brought by COVID led Wilburforce to award Megan a 2021 Wilburforce Conservation Leadership award. Megan started her career as a door-to-door canvasser, served as executive director of Colorado Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and was founding executive director of Illinois PIRG. Megan has worked on numerous campaigns on a variety of environmental causes at the local, state and national level and has over 35 years of nonprofit management experience. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Michael Jamison2020Conservationist and writer Michael Jamison has worked for more than a decade with the National Parks Conservation Association, and currently serves as Senior Program Manager for the Crown of the Continent Initiative. This project, based in the transboundary Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana and southern Canada, encompasses Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and the surrounding 18-million-acre ecosystem. The goal is to work at the intersection of conservation, community and culture, forging a sustainable future for the region’s people, places, wildlife and wildlands. A longtime Montana resident, Michael’s storytelling explores the interaction between people and the landscapes they call home. This includes park-adjacent recreation communities, traditional timber and ranching economies, and long-standing tribal and first nation cultures. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Erin Sexton2020Erin’s passion is working at the interface of science and policy to ensure that sound science informs environmental decision-making, in the large landscapes and transboundary rivers of Western North America. Erin enjoys working in collaborative teams, across borders, disciplines and ways of knowing to solve environmental challenges with science-based solutions. At the University of Montana, Flathead Lake Biological Station, Erin’s research focuses on the complex and far-reaching impacts of legacy and proposed mining in transboundary watersheds across Alaska, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia. This work incorporates aquatic and landscape ecology, conservation biology, climate science, and environmental policy in the U.S. and Canada. Her pathways of impact include science communications to media, communities, agencies, decision-makers and students. Erin started in 2000, as a University of Montana MSc student and Kendall Foundation Fellow. Honors include the 2012 American Fisheries Society, Conservation Achievement Award and the 2015 Wilburforce Fellowship in Conservation Science. Erin recently led a 21-author Letter in Science, high-lighting the risks of mines in British Columbia to downstream rivers and communities. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Dave Hadden2020Dave Hadden founded and has served as executive director of Headwaters Montana since its beginning in 2007. Headwaters Montana works to protect northwest Montana's water, wildlife and quiet, traditional, outdoor recreational opportunities. Dave's affiliation with Wilburforce began in 2000 when he worked for the Montana Wilderness Association focusing at the grassroots level on transboundary conservation issues across the Montana - British Columbia boundary; he served for six years on the Yellowstone to Yukon board of directors. That transboundary focus continued under Headwaters Montana. Always working in collaboration with other conservation groups and community members, Dave's and his teams' work has led to a number of welcome conservation outcomes and progress on long-term campaigns, including permanent mineral withdrawals for the North Fork Flathead River next to Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, and protecting transboundary rivers shared between the US and British Columbia such as the Kootenai. The 2020 Wilburforce Conservation Leadership Award was made to Dave and his colleagues for their collaborative work to protect US rivers, aquatic life, fish, and traditional cultural uses in  rivers that are damaged or threatened by upstream mining activity in BC. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Heather Hardcastle2020Heather Hardcastle was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska, in the heart of Lingit Aani. She grew up commercial salmon fishing with her family along the Taku River, and with wild salmon at the center of family life. After completing a master’s degree in conservation biology at Duke University in 2001, Heather returned to Alaska and she and her family co-founded Taku River Reds to market the high quality catch of Taku fishermen across the U.S., and to build a company committed to conservation and community. In 2010, Heather began work with Trout Unlimited Alaska to permanently protect the Tongass National Forest’s most productive, intact salmon watersheds.  A few years later, Heather and other Alaskans co-founded the Salmon Beyond Borders (SBB) campaign to defend and sustain the iconic Alaska-British Columbia (B.C.) “transboundary” salmon rivers like the Taku that are threatened by dozens of proposed Canadian hard rock mines. While Heather served as director, thousands of Americans and Canadians joined this international campaign; Heather and her team built invaluable relationships with decision makers in both countries. After transitioning from director to advisor at the SBB campaign, Heather and her family migrated from Alaska to northern California in 2018 to spend school years at the southern edge of the “Salmon Coast,” and summers near the Taku. Much of Heather’s current passion centers on supporting and uplifting the Indigenous-led transboundary alliance that premiered a powerful video, When the Salmon Spoke, in May 2020, and that strives to use Indigenous stories as tools for connection and change. All bios are from the year the award was presented.

Jill Weitz2020Salmon Beyond Borders campaign director Jill Weitz loves living in the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska, where Juneau has been her home for more than a decade. Growing up in Minnesota on the Mississippi River, Jill’s interests have always involved water, from the wild rivers and lakes to frozen hockey rinks - and now, the traditional Tlingit waters and lands that connect the icefields to the ocean. Jill originally moved to Southeast Alaska to complete a national term of service as an AmeriCorps member, and after a "quick hiatus" to complete graduate school at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law, she moved right back to serve as a Compliance and Enforcement Officer for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Since late 2013, Jill has been working with communities throughout the Alaska / Washington / Idaho / Montana / British Columbia transboundary regions for SalmonState. The Salmon Beyond Borders campaign is SalmonState’s flagship project and allows Jill to work with some incredible transboundary partners. All bios are from the year the award was presented.