PRESIDENT: Allison Jones
Allison received her B.A in Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz and her M.S in Conservation Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno in 1996. Her Masters study analyzed the effects of cattle grazing on small mammal communities in the Great Basin. Since completing her studies, Allison has worked as an endangered species specialist for ecological consulting firms and then as the staff conservation biologist and later the executive director for the Wild Utah Project. While at Wild Utah Project Allison was appointed by Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Directors to sit on the state's Black Bear Working Group which re-wrote the 2000 Utah Black Bear Management Plan and the Wolf Working Group which wrote Utah's first Wolf Conservation and Management Plan in 2005. Allison was also appointed in 2013 to sit on the state's Sage-grouse Plan Implementation Council. Allison currently serves as principal of Allison L Jones, LLC, where she specializes in large landscape scale conservation analyses, and analyses of state and federal wildlife and habitat management plans and revisions. She brings expertise on both the ecology/biology and policy side of these analyses.
VICE-PRESIDENT: Kelley Weston
Kelley is the co-owner of Native Landscapes a company founded to design and build beautiful, sustainable outdoor environments. Native Landscapes is an award-winning leader in understanding, creating and establishing environmentally appropriate landscapes.
TREASURER: Rose Chilcoat
Rose brings a lifetime of conservation work and advocacy. Originally from the eastern U.S., a career with the National Park Service took her from the Rocky Mountains to Utah’s canyons, the Pacific NW and Alaska. Returning to Durango, CO, she helped lead Great Old Broads for Wilderness for 15 years. Rose knows firsthand that effective conservation advocacy creates targets. Witnessing damage across the West on public lands, she is determined to address the travesties of mismanaged livestock grazing.
DIRECTOR: Dr. Bruce Hayse
Dr. Bruce Hayse runs a family medical practice in Jackson, Wyoming, and previously worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho. He earned a Master’s degree in plant ecology from the University of Wisconsin before graduating from the University of Oregon Medical School. Dr. Hayse also co-founded Earth First!, a group known for its radical approach to conservation activism.
DIRECTOR: James Holt, Sr.
James Holt, Sr. (Nez Perce Tribe), has over 26 years of expertise in environmental sciences and tribal community engagement. Specializing in environmental law and environmental justice; public policy, including natural resources and water policy development; climate change planning; wilderness management; and utilities administration, James brings a comprehensive understanding of the complex issues at the intersection of environmental conservation and Indigenous rights. His adeptness in federal lands management and intergovernmental relationship building further enhances his capacity to foster collaborative partnerships that prioritize tribal interests while promoting sustainable environmental practices. Through his dedication and breadth of experience, James plays a crucial role in advancing tribal relations and environmental stewardship initiatives.
DIRECTOR: Artemis Eyster
Artemis is an environmental educator and scientist. Artemis’ childhood experiences in the outdoors instilled in her a devotion to helping others understand and value the natural world. After receiving her B.A. in Geosciences from Princeton University, Artemis worked for Mountain Studies Institute in Durango, Colorado where she developed a research-based understanding of the issues caused by public lands grazing through helping to coordinate the Colorado Bighorn Sheep Monitoring Program. Artemis’ experiences living and working in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains motivates her to support the protection of our public lands.
DIRECTOR: Helena Edelson
Helena is founder of Large Carnivore Fund and ICLAAW. Throughout her academic career, she studied ecology and Permaculture, then wildlife biology focusing on wolves, moose and caribou. She interned with BLM and Alaska Fish & Game from Fairbanks up to the Brooks Range. Moving to the lower 48, she spent twenty five years as a software engineer and speaking at conferences on building complex adaptive systems based on super-organization in ecosystems. After retiring, Helena began work toward a Ph.D. on snow leopards and climate change, but COVID lockdowns forced her to pivot from research in Central Asia. She moved to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to help large carnivore species and communities as a local. She has been working with conservation groups since 1988 to thread the needle between sustainable solutions in the face of stakeholder opposition and public lands usage, threatened and endangered wildlife, and climate change.
DIRECTOR: Tom Ribe
Tom Ribe received his BS in botany from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MS in Environmental Policy from the University of Oregon. He has worked for the National Park Service in prescribed fire and education, and for Los Alamos National Laboratory among other agency stints. He wrote Inferno by Committee II about large fires and climate change in northern New Mexico. He is a founding board member of Firefighters for Safety Ethics and Ecology, and Executive Director of Caldera Action, a nonprofit focused on protecting one of America’s newest national park units, the Valles Caldera National Preserve in Northern New Mexico. Caldera Action has mounted a multi-year campaign to remove trespass cattle from the VCNP with the help of WWP. Tom’s focus with Caldera Action has been to help the National Park Service create the only high-altitude cattle free landscape in the southern Rockies, where plant and animal species can regain their natural balance in a healthy public watershed.
DIRECTOR: Nancy Roth
Nancy has 24 years—and counting—of experience in pediatric bedside nursing, but spends as much time as she can on the Land, volunteering to practice landside nursing. She is in the early stages of exploring the intersection of public health and public lands. After growing up among the forests and lakes of the Southeast and Northeast, she moved to the Southwest in 2007 to immerse herself in Red Rock country. While she feels connected to the natural world everywhere, the desert is her soul space. Her day job keeps her based in the city for now, but it also provides the time and resources to wander. A lifelong bibliophile, she believes that reading the literature of the Land deepens our connection to it and strengthens our ability to heal it. She is honored to serve on the Western Watersheds Project Board and to help protect and restore the Land for future generations of all living things.
DIRECTOR: John Persell
John Persell is a longtime conservation advocate and attorney originally from Northern Minnesota. Childhood trips out west with his family to places like Yellowstone National Park and the Black Hills made a mark on him, and upon completing law school he committed to protecting our public lands and wildlife habitat. He previously worked for Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, Wyoming, and more recently as a staff attorney for Western Watersheds Project covering issues in Wyoming and Utah. He is now a senior staff attorney for Oregon Wild based in Portland, Oregon, with expertise in the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and federal land management statutes. John is excited to continue helping WWP carry out its mission to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife as a board member.
Advisory Board
- Debra L. Donahue
- Louise Lasley
- Jon Marvel
- Dr. Elizabeth Painter
- Dr. Tom Pringle
- Todd Shuman
