Esther Lev – Conserving Wetlands
Business-Organization: The Wetlands Conservancy
Esther Lev is executive director of The Wetlands Conservancy, a statewide nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon. Over the past 30 years, she has worked to restore and preserve Oregon’s wetlands – marshy areas that provide vital wildlife habitat and the potential to forestall climate change.
Esther has established The Wetlands Conservancy as the Leading Voice for Oregon’s Greatest Wetlands- Promoting Conservation, Collaboration, and Stewardship.
The Wetlands Conservancy is the only organization in Oregon dedicated to promoting community and private partnerships to permanently protect and conserve Oregon’s greatest wetlands – our most biologically rich and diverse lands.
Through her work at The Wetlands Conservancy, Esther designs and implements collaborative strategies to sustain the health of wetlands. by working with local communities, land trusts, watershed councils, individual landowners and resource managers to promote local stewardship, restoration and acquisition of properties.
Esther trains, educates and provides assistance directly to landowners, citizen groups, and businesses to increase local conservation and restoration of key wetlands, streams and watersheds.
Esther was a founder of the Coalition to Restore Urban Waterways and designed and taught stream ecology and restoration courses for grass-roots groups and local governments throughout the United States. Additionally, Esther has worked in Baja California, Nepal, India and Thailand.
Portland, OR
USA
Website: http://www.wetlandsconservancy.org
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/WetlandsConservancy
Workshop(s)
Workshop 1: The Foundation of Trust
Southeast Oregon’s vast Harney Basin is a mosaic of productive ranchlands and wetland habitats, with Malheur National Wildlife Refuge at its center. The basin provides critical stopover and breeding habitat for millions of migrating waterfowl.
Ten years ago four Harney County ranchers invited The Wetlands Conservancy’s Esther Lev to talk with them about flood irrigation. They quickly found a mutual appreciation of the benefits that spring flood irrigation provides to both ranching and the birds that rely on the arid region’s fragile wetlands.
As Esther and the ranchers dug a little deeper, they recognized a mutual love for all that the Harney Basin supports. The shared appreciation led to brainstorming responses to a changing climate and potentially diminished water supply. They shared their ideas with a diverse group of partners who had been working together on a collaborative Malheur Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan.
While the partners do not always agree on everything, they all agree
that a better scientific understanding of the natural dynamics in the
basin will help both public and private land managers balance the need
to provide waterbird habitat with ranchers’ need for nutritious forage
for livestock.
There are now lasting relationships, built on trust, laying the
foundation for some truly great things to happen on a landscape and
community level.
