Western Connections and Community: Happy Hour with Conservationists!

Bre Owens

National Grazing Lands Coalition

https://www.linkedin.com/in/breanna-owens-69656411/

Breanna Owens lives in Los Molinos, CA where she runs a small cattle operation utilizing mostly leased private and public lands. Bre grew up in Northern CA on a cow-calf ranch, attended Chico State and Colorado State University, Fort Collins, focusing her studies on rangeland ecology and livestock production. Beyond CA, she has worked on cattle ranches in OR, NV, WY and HI. She is motivated by a love for working landscapes – for the people, land and livestock that are a part of them. She believes that agriculture at its best is conservation at its best. Bre’s role as Stewardship Coordinator at WLA is designed to bring landowners' needs and solutions into WLA’s programs, policy and communications efforts, while sharing resources and facilitating partnerships across WLA’s network. In this capacity she works with land stewards in all western states. She maintains a comprehensive understanding of current challenges and emerging opportunities relevant to working lands stewardship through these interactions and by running her own beef cattle operation. Additionally, she serves as the board chair of the CA Rangeland Conservation Coalition, board chair for Holistic Management International, and is a CA Certified Rangeland Manager (CRM #97). She supports various working lands collaborative projects across the west in an advisory capacity, including a project focused on the Integration of Scientific, Economic, and Social Knowledge to Establish Carbon Markets in the American Southwest and a project advancing Smart Foodscapes to Enhance the Sustainability of Western Beef Production. In her spare time, she prepares grazing management plans for ranching operations in CA.

Dr. Kris Hulvey

Working Lands Conservation

https://www.workinglandsconservation.org/meet-our-team-banner

As an ecologist and founder of WLC, my goal is to improve conservation of US wild and working landscapes by finding science-based solutions to management challenges that require collaborative action among stakeholders. I have over 20 years of experience in ecosystem management, restoration, and the links between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human well-being. I have worked in California grasslands, Australian working lands, the US Channel Islands, Alaska, and the US Intermountain West. For all of this work, I draw on ecological theory to inform field experiments and guide data syntheses, and draw on interdisciplinary experience to develop partnerships with landowners, managers, and other stakeholders leading to novel management outcomes.

Kelly Beevers

The Nature Conservancy- Northern Great Plains

https://www.toposandanthros.com/about-kelly

KELLY BEEVERS. Bios are a funny thing - the ways in which we squeeze ourselves into an acceptable package, hitting the high notes, owning accomplishments, name-dropping this competitive school, that esteemed employer, and some prestigious award. We say we use bios to introduce and familiarize an audience with a speaker. But in practice, bios play a key role in the world of professional posturing. Often the included details signal what makes someone relevant, respectable, or reputable.

I could start by telling you that I graduated from a state school with a top tier business school where I achieved my BBA in both finance and accounting. And maybe you would think, “oh, a public school and discount my perspective.” Or perhaps that bit of information would signal that I was nerd enough to double major and dull enough to focus on the numbers, so maybe I have something substantial to offer. Or perhaps your mind would go somewhere else completely and you’d wonder if I was one of those kids that attended every major football game in a stadium filled with more people than you can imagine. I could go on to tell you that I graduated early during the golden time of the market crash in Dec 2008, so I stayed around and earned my Master of Real Estate. And if I were playing this game, I would probably qualify further so that you knew it was a rigorous finance-based program despite the misleading title. But then again, I’m posturing, proving, promoting. And though I'm proud of my time at Texas A&M, I feel like where I went to school and the degrees I received aren’t reasons that I’m good at my job or reasons you should (or shouldn’t) listen to me. (And if you’re wondering, I did go to all the football games and chant all the yells.)

I could tell you that I began my career at a large family-owned company that developed and invested in commercial real estate throughout Texas, that I underwrote and managed the entire process from empty lots to active hotels, apartments, and such in a large city center. But again, that doesn’t feel important. What I would rather tell you is that there, at Hixon Properties in San Antonio, my hunger for utilizing places to foster the connection of people and strengthen communities really grew. I would rather tell you that I am constantly curious, almost to a fault. And beginning then and increasing since, I’ve learned that I thrive, in a world built on relationships rather than accomplishments, where people know me instead as someone who is usually laughing and always contemplating. So instead of where I went to school or worked, people know me as someone who is driven by meaningful connection and community. I am a dangerous mix of ambitious, ridiculous, optimistic, and determined. And I have grown into someone who is unapologetically directed by intuition and grace.

And in early 2015, those forces ultimately led me to Montana. Here, I have applied myself to recreational lands and working ranches throughout the American West. I could switch back to professional posturing and drop the name of the private equity impact investing firm that I joined when I first made it to Montana or talk up how for the last six years I have been self-employed as a strategy consultant. But that company doesn’t impress me and the categories assigned have never fit me. I’ve been called a “swiss army knife for hire” and “an alchemist”, but really I magnify and amplify the goals and efforts of landowner-led collaboratives, non-profits, small businesses, ranchers, and landowners. And though that currently looks like being my own rouge machine, over time there are likely other expressions where I will be able to better make an impact. The heart of my work isn’t about any of the things in a traditional bio. It is listening. Inviting others, especially those who have been historically left out of the discussion, to define the challenge, inform the opportunity and contribute to the solution. Ensuring everyone feels heard and seen, honored and valued. Trusting that the best, most lasting change moves at the speed of trust. It is centering shared outcomes. Moving organizational and individual relationships from othering to inclusion, and eventually, to belonging. Approaching each person with curiosity knowing that they are valuable simply because they are themselves. Entering a conversation knowing I have much to learn as I increase my equity competency. This is the healing work that fuels my passion for rural places and people and for the working land and wild places on which these communities depend.