What We Think About When We Think About Conservation, an interview with Lesli Allison
Bridging The Urban-Rural Divide with Western Landowners Alliance CEO Lesli Allison
Many people, when they think about conservation, picture public lands—like wilderness or national parks—as opposed to a ranch where cattle might live. But Lesli Allison, founder and chief executive of the Western Landowners Alliance, learned early on that idea is part of a false dichotomy. When she became a ranch manager herself, as a conservationist, she saw how important private lands are in the conservation discussion—but also that landowners are often othered and misunderstood by agencies and nonprofit groups. Now she’s excited about bridging the urban-rural divide and empowering private landowners to restore the landscapes they love and on which many depend for their livelihoods. We chatted with Allison to find out what the future of conservation might look like on the private lands side.
Lesli Allison speaking to a group of partners. Photo Credit Zach Altman
An Urban/Rural, Public/Private Misunderstanding
When she tells her own story, Lesli Allison quotes Aldo Leopold: “The oldest task in history is to learn how to live on a piece of land without spoiling it,” she says. “I think that's not only our oldest task now, but our most urgent as a society on this planet. And that requires human stewardship on the lands that we depend on for our sustenance.”
The idea of human stewardship can be confusing in an age when many people grew up with the “Yellowstone model” of conservation—the idea that the only way to save a landscape is by eradicating humans from it, à la wilderness in a national park. But that way of thinking misunderstands the ways humans rely on and affect the land, Allison says.
“I think that sometimes, as society gets more and more removed from the land, we forget that the raw materials that make it possible for us to survive as people come from the land,” she says. “We get our food, our fiber, our energy, our clean water and air, all those things come from the landscape. And we have to be able to use those resources. And we have to do that in an intelligent way, where not only are we conserving them over time, but we're actually regenerating those resources to the extent we can.”
Allison herself didn’t always think this way. Growing up on a National Forest inholding, she spent her childhood roaming the forest with her dog near Pecos, New Mexico, and saw the negative sides of logging, grazing, and hunting, which drove her to consider herself an environmentalist. But when a friend asked her to manage his ranch in Colorado, she began to learn a different way of understanding the land and healing it. The ranch’s mission was unique: to try to conserve and restore ecological health, and also learn how to do enterprises on the land that could support the bottom line and enable the ranch to remain economically viable and support livelihoods into the future. What she learned in the process shifted the course of Allison’s life.
Photo credit Amy S. Martin
A New Way of Thinking About Stewardship
Allison points to beavers and pollinators when she talks about how humans rely on and affect the land: “They change the landscape,” she says. “Any species on the planet changes the environment around it for its own benefits. We're no different. But we can, like the pollinators and the beavers, really enhance lands. We can increase biodiversity if we're thoughtful. We can increase water infiltration. There are things we can contribute positively.”
The task at hand, then, is to learn how to do that—in a way that recognizes not only the human need, but the needs of all the other living things that share the planet with us, she says.
That’s where Western Landowners Alliance comes in. A West-wide, landowner-led organization, the group aims to make the West a better place by advancing policies and practices that sustain working lands, connected landscapes, and native species. Right now, as conservation evolves into a new era, private landowners are working to find their place.
“We've come from a fairly embattled place in the conservation movement,” Allison says. “It's been environment versus industry for a long time, whether that's agriculture or energy. And what we need to be doing increasingly is figuring out how to integrate our land use and stewardship so that we are able to provide for the things that human beings need—our food, fiber, shelter, energy—and also be able to provide for the environmental needs, which humans also need.”
Moving into this new era means working with an array of different people—and learning to listen.
“It's an evolving approach to conservation, which is what Robert Bonnie, who's the USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation, said: ‘Work with people, not against them, with land owners, with foresters, with farmers and ranchers, not against them.’”
In southeastern New Mexico, Western Landowners Alliance is partnering with ranchers, scientists and public agencies on a project to improve grassland ecosystems, increase forage productivity and provide habitat for endangered Lesser Prairie Chickens. Photo credit: Western Landowners Association
Learning to Communicate
In a country that’s deeply divided politically, learning to work together for a common goal is crucial.
“We all have to get along, we all have to derive our sustenance from these lands,” Allison says. “And so really, this new era of conservation is about creating new relationships between people and the land and between people themselves, with one another.”
A voice that’s been lacking in the conversation, Allison says, is the middle-ground voice of the landowners who need to make ends meet, and who are also deeply connected to the land and invested in restoring its ecosystems. Environmental groups and agricultural groups have long had loud voices in the discussion—but Western Landowners Alliance members are excited to step into the conversation in a fresh way.
“These are thoughtful land stewards who are willing to step forward and are dedicated to keeping land whole and healthy and are willing to take part in developing the policies, sharing the practices, and telling the stories to be able to be successful across the west,” Allison says.
Because of their boots-on-the-ground experience, they’re at times the best people to help move conversations in a constructive way—toward actual progress and solutions, instead of getting bogged down in us-versus-them conflicts.
Montana Tour: Landowners, researchers and partners gather to share knowledge on reducing conflicts between predators and livestock, including the practice of carcass removal and composting. Photo credit: Matt Collins
A Cause for Hope
“The thing that always gives me hope is getting out on the land with the people who are actually on the land, and seeing the partnerships, the innovations that are happening, the collaboration among landowners and across public and private lands,” Allison says.
For example, seeing landowners helping to recover endangered species—which pleases the environmental side and gives the agricultural groups something to be proud of.
“That's the future,” she says. “If we can keep that going, really that's the future. And to me, that's always the antidote to what you read in the headlines. Most people, given the opportunity, really want to do good things and leave the world a better place. And that's what you see when you go out there on the ground with folks.”
For more information about Western Landowners Alliance stewardship and policy goals, check out westernlandowners.org.
WLA staff, researchers and partners gather at the Spur Lake Cattle Company as part of a collaborative Conservation Innovation Grant to investigate non-lethal predator-livestock conflict reduction practices. Photo credit: Western Landowners Alliance
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