Mauricia Baca is the State Director of the Nevada Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. In this role, she leads TNC’s efforts in Nevada across a wide range of conservation issues that are familiar to Mountain & Prairie listeners– the Colorado River, the Sagebrush Sea, and renewable energy. But Nevada is also home to some very unique conservation challenges related to biodiversity, mining for rare earth metals, groundwater for agriculture, and more. So I was excited to have this opportunity to learn from Mauricia about some of the specific challenges facing Nevada, TNC’s solutions to these challenges, and how the lessons learned can be applied in other regions of the West.
Mauricia was born in Mexico, grew up in New York City, and credits much of her love of nature and the environment to her childhood experiences exploring Central Park. After college, she served in the Peace Corps, worked as a community organizer in New York, and eventually attended law school. After four years of working as a prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, she moved to Nevada and began her first position with The Nature Conservancy, leading conservation work on the Truckee River. She has served as the State Director since November 2020, and, as you’ll hear, all of her efforts are infused with a deep level of compassion, empathy, and gratitude.
Mauricia has such a fascinating personal and professional trajectory, and there are many lessons to be learned from both her approach to her life and career, and the specifics of TNC’s critical work in Nevada. We talked about her youth in Mexico and New York City, and how she has been committed to environmental work since she was a very young girl. We discuss her stint in the Peace Corps and how those experiences laid the groundwork for her current work with TNC. She shares some insights from switching from the litigation world to the conservation world, and she offers some wisdom for folks looking to make a similar transition. We discuss lithium mining, groundwater conservation, and climate change, and how TNC is making strides to protect biodiversity while balancing society’s growing need for rare earth metals, water, and development. She also shares some wisdom gleaned from her recent battle with breast cancer, and discusses how her approach to work has changed since that life-altering health scare.
A big thanks to Mauricia for being so open and thoughtful, and for sharing so many wonderful insights from her inspiring career. Be sure to check out the episode notes below for links to everything we discussed and to watch Mauricia’s recent TEDx talk, which serves as a great companion to this interview. Enjoy!
Header photo © Chip Carroon/TNC, headshot © The Nature Conservancy
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EPISODE PARTNER:
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Colorado chapter of The Nature Conservancy and TNC chapters throughout the Western United States. Guided by science and grounded by decades of collaborative partnerships, The Nature Conservancy has a long-standing legacy of achieving lasting results to create a world where nature and people thrive.
On the last Tuesday of every month throughout 2024, Mountain & Prairie will be delving into conversations with a wide range of The Nature Conservancy’s leaders, partners, collaborators, and stakeholders, highlighting the myriad of conservation challenges, opportunities, and solutions here in the American West and beyond. You can access all of the episodes here.
To learn more about The Nature Conservancy’s impactful work in the West and around the world, visit www.nature.org
RESOURCES:
Topics Discussed:
- 4:00 – Mauricia’s upbringing and early years in Mexico and New York City
- 7:00 – When she knew she wanted to devote her career to environmental work
- 9:15 – Legal training as thought training
- 11:45 – How the Peace Corps and other experiences helped her learn to build trust and relationships
- 16:45 – When TNC entered Mauricia’s life as a next career step
- 19:45 – More details on how she was able to land her first job with TNC
- 24:00 – Career evolution within TNC
- 26:00 – Starting as TNC State Director at the beginning of the pandemic
- 28:45 – Tackling climate-related challenges in Nevada and beyond
- 34:00 – The Atwood Preserve and the quiet beauty of the Mojave Desert
- 39:00 – TNC’s work to preserve biodiversity in the face of lithium mining
- 43:45 – The importance of groundwater for Nevada’s ag sector
- 49:00 – Working in partnership with Tribal communities
- 54:00 – Thinking locally and acting globally
- 56:00 – Lessons learned from Mauricia’s recent cancer scare
- 1:03:30 – Favorite books
- 1:06:00 – Parting words of wisdom
Information Referenced:
- Mauricia Baca
- The Nature Conservancy in Nevada
- TNC Nevada’s 40th Anniversary
- Mauricia’s TEDx talk
- The Sagebrush Sea
- The Colorado River
- Secrets of the Mojave
- TNC’s work on groundwater
- TNC’s lithium report
- Power of Place-West
- Mining the Sun
- Peace Corps
- Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division
- Truckee River
- Get Outdoors Nevada
- Atwood Preserve
- Amargosa River
- Ash Meadows
- How the nation’s driest state is using cash to free up water The Washington Post
- Celene and Izabella episode
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Dumping in Dixie by Robert Bullard
- Gabriel García Márquez
- Isabel Allende
- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
- Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Enjoy this episode? Then you might like these too:
- Pete McBride Returns – Exploring & Documenting His Backyard River
- Dan Stellar – Bolstering Biodiversity in Arizona and Beyond
- Kate Mannix – A Legacy of Land Stewardship
- Matt Pierson – Finding New Solutions for Food Insecurity
- Douglas Brinkley – Exploring the Past to Find Inspiration for the Future
- Dr. Sara Dant Returns – “Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West”
Visit the podcast page for a full list of episodes where you can filter episodes by topic and guests’ vocations.
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