When 49 days to go August 12, 2025 at 1:00pm 1 hr
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Growing a Stewardship Arm within an Advocacy Organization

Presenters: Jeremy Lynch, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Bjorn Fredrickson, New Mexico Wild

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Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (New Mexico Wild) share similar roots in the conservation movement borne of the Wilderness Act in the 1960s. Both began as advocacy organizations and have successful track records operating in this vein. In recent years, both have expanded their work to include formal wilderness and public lands stewardship programs. Learn about the challenges and opportunities from the stewardship program leads for both organizations, including how stewardship enhances nonprofit advocacy efforts; lessons learned from building relationships, trust, and long-term partnerships between nonprofits and federal land managers; and how these partnerships benefit all parties, including during periods of upheaval and discordant national priorities.

 Jeremy Lynch is Stewardship Director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). He was hired to build the volunteer-supported program from the ground-up in 2016 and continues to serve as a bridge-builder with agency partners at BLM and USFS field offices across Utah. SUWA's Stewardship Program works to ensure policy and litigation wins are implemented and upheld on the physical landscape. They build resilient, long-term, operational relationships between SUWA and ground-level agency staff, SUWA staff and their members and supporters, and between those who visit the land and the land itself. SUWA tangibly restores hundreds of thousands of square feet of fragile desert ecosystems impacted by Utah's burgeoning recreation economy, working simultaneously to educate visitors and user groups as to best practices when exploring the redrock. He lives in southern Utah in a straw bale home he built with friends during a pandemic.
 

Bjorn Fredrickson is the Conservation Director at New Mexico Wild, where he leads several of the organization’s advocacy campaigns as well as its stewardship, outreach, and GIS programs and staff. In the initial chapter of his career, Bjorn spent 13 years working for the U.S. Forest Service, with positions focused on the management of recreation, wilderness, wild & scenic rivers, and numerous other programs in Washington DC, Washington State, California, and New Mexico. In a previous role with the Forest Service Bjorn helped to form New Mexico Wild’s wilderness ranger program as a partnership that began in 2017. Bjorn lives in Albuquerque with his wife, Amy, and daughter, Anja, and in addition to spending time with family, loves exploring our public lands by foot, bike, and raft.

 

 

Since 1983, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) has been the only independent organization working full-time to defend America’s redrock wilderness from oil and gas development, unnecessary road construction, rampant off-road vehicle use, and other threats to Utah’s wilderness-quality lands. The mission of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is the preservation of the outstanding wilderness at the heart of the Colorado Plateau, and the management of these lands in their natural state for the benefit of all. SUWA promotes local and national recognition of the region’s unique wilderness character through research and public education; supports both administrative and legislative initiatives to permanently protect the Colorado Plateau wild places within the National Park and National Wilderness Preservation System, or by other protective designations where appropriate; builds support for such initiatives on both the local and national level; and provides leadership within the conservation movement through uncompromising advocacy for wilderness preservation.

New Mexico Wild is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) grassroots organization dedicated to the protection, restoration, and continued enjoyment of New Mexico’s wildlands and wilderness areas. Founded in 1997, we achieve our mission through administrative protection, federal wilderness designation, and ongoing stewardship. We have a membership of individuals from all corners of New Mexico and across the nation. Our organizing efforts span the state and involve many diverse groups, including ranchers, sportsmen, land grants, acequia communities, tribal and religious leaders, scientists, youth, and community leaders. We are the only statewide wilderness group in New Mexico with a proven track record of building diverse coalitions to protect our public lands.