Chandra Brown – Fostering Creativity Through River Adventures
Chandra Brown is an educator, writer, and river guide who has worked on the West’s most iconic rivers, including many seasons below the rim of the Grand Canyon. She’s also the founder of the Freeflow Institute, a unique Montana-based program that offers multi-day river trips for writers and creatives that combine immersion in the natural …
Jay Kleberg – True Dedication to Conservation, Adventure & Texas
Jay Kleberg is a conservationist and Associate Director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. He’s also the co-founder of Explore Ranches, a new company that connects outdoor enthusiasts to some of the most iconic private ranches in Texas and beyond. Jay has built his career and life around a deep respect for land and …
Daniel Anderson – Finding Common Ground
Daniel Anderson is a Montana native and founder of The Common Ground Project, a nature-based retreat, hiking, and camping experience in which small groups of people from around the world share adventure, education, and conversation. Located on Daniel’s family ranch in the heart of Montana’s renowned Tom Miner Basin, The Common Ground Project seeks to …
Alexis Bonogofsky – Taking a Stand for the West
Alexis Bonogofsky is a rancher, conservationist, and community organizer who is fiercely committed to protecting the landscapes and communities of eastern Montana. While much of Alexis’s career has been devoted to environmental issues in the West, the 2011 Exxon oil spill in the Yellowstone River brought the fight to her doorstep—her family’s pastures were inundated …
Juanita Vero – A Deep Love of Place
[Fall 2020 Update: To listen to Juanita’s most recent Mountain & Prairie podcast appearance in which she discusses her campaign for Missoula County Commissioner, please visit this webpage. Thanks!] Juanita Vero is a partner at the E Bar L Ranch, a family-owned dude ranch located on the Blackfoot River, about an hour east of Missoula, …
Stephen Smith, Part 2 – Evolution & Reinvention
Those of you who have been listening to the podcast since the early days probably remember my first conversation with Stephen Smith. We talked for an hour and a half about his career as a professional photographer, his motorcycle adventures around South America, his time working on farms and ranches, surfing, and more. Since that …
Rebecca Jewett – Big Ideas for the New West
Rebecca Jewett is the executive director of Palmer Land Trust, a conservation organization committed to protecting southern Colorado’s recreational open space, working agricultural land, and stunning scenic vistas. Under Rebecca’s leadership, Palmer has moved away from traditional, decades-old land conservation methods and into a more proactive model, pursuing audacious and outside-the-box conservation strategies across a …
Sarah Wentzel-Fisher – Conservation in the Radical Center
Sarah Wentzel-Fisher is the Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition, an innovative conservation organization devoted to building soil, biodiversity, and resilience on western working landscapes. Quivira was founded over twenty years ago by two conservationists and a rancher, all three of whom were exhausted by the divisive nature of the relationships between the agricultural and …
Chris Eyer – Montana’s Mindful Mule Packer
Chris Eyer is a true Western polymath. He is probably best known for his work as a mule packer, in which he uses mules to transport supplies into some of Montana’s most remote wilderness areas—he documents the adventures on his extremely popular Instagram account @muledragger. But as you’ll hear in our conversation, mule packing only …
Sarah Calhoun – Community Building Through Commerce
Sarah Calhoun is the founder and owner of Red Ants Pants, a Montana-based apparel company that makes high-quality, American-made workwear for women. But Sarah’s business ventures are just the tip of the iceberg—she also started the Red Ants Pants Music Festival, which attracts world-class musicians like Dwight Yoakam and Lucinda Williams. The proceeds from the …
Christine Su – The Business of Healthy Grasslands
Christine Su is an entrepreneur and CEO of PastureMap, a Silicon Valley startup that creates cutting-edge ranch management software. PastureMap helps ranchers plan grazing, track forage, monitor herd performance, manage record keeping, and much more, all with the goal of saving ranchers time and making their operations more profitable. In the business of ranching—one that …
Sarah King – Collaborative Conservation in the American Southwest
Sarah King is a rancher, conservationist, wife, and mother of two who lives and works on her family’s 55,000-acre cattle ranch in southern Arizona’s Altar Valley. The King’s Anvil Ranch was established in 1895 and has operated successfully within their family for generations, setting an example of how to run a financially viable agricultural business, …
Noel Durant – Conservation & Community in the Gunnison Valley
Noel Durant is the new Executive Director of the Crested Butte Land Trust, a conservation organization that protects and stewards the ranches, trails, open space, and wildlife habit of Colorado’s Gunnison Valley. Noel took the helm of the land trust in early 2017, and he brings a wide variety of conservation experience with him into …
Bryan Martin & Elizabeth Williams – Life Skills Through Wilderness Adventure
Bryan Martin and Elizabeth Williams work at Big City Mountaineers, a Colorado-based nonprofit that transforms the lives of underserved youth through wilderness mentoring expeditions. Through partnerships with community youth programs around the United States, Big City Mountaineers exposes close to 1,000 youth per year to outdoor adventures in some of our country’s most spectacular public lands. …
John Dunaway – The Life and Times of a Merchant Mariner
John Dunaway – Life and Times of a Merchant Mariner John Dunaway is a Texas-based merchant mariner who spends six months each year traveling the world as the captain of large cargo ships. Whether cruising the calm, warm waters of Central America or avoiding Somali pirates off the coast of Africa, John’s goal is the …
Mike Reilly – Helping Combat Veterans Rediscover Purpose
Mike Reilly is the Veterans Program Coordinator at Heroes and Horses, a Montana-based nonprofit that uses expedition-style horse pack trips through wild landscapes to help veterans overcome the challenges of life after the military. Prior to his work with Heroes and Horses, Mike was a Navy SEAL and served as a member of SEAL Team 1 in …
Jeff Lee – Creating a Literary Home on the Range
Jeff Lee is the co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Land Library, a residential library located on a historic ranch in one of Colorado’s most beautiful and dramatic high country grassland basins. The Buffalo Peaks Ranch, as it is known, will eventually house a collection of over 35,000 books related to natural history, conservation, and the American West. These books will …
Christian Beckwith – Building a Conservation Coalition
Christian Beckwith is the director of SHIFT, a Jackson Hole-based non-profit that is building a powerful coalition to protect our nation’s public lands. By bringing together climbers, skiers, hunters, anglers, land managers, and countless other stakeholders, SHIFT is finding common ground and harnessing these groups’ collective power to ensure that public lands—our birthright as Americans—remain safe …
Taylor Keen – Tribal Truth Seeker
Taylor Keen is a teacher, community builder, and Native American thought leader based out of Omaha, Nebraska. His back story is as diverse as it is impressive—he’s a member of both the Omaha Tribe and the Cherokee Nation, attended Dartmouth College (BA) and Harvard University (Masters of Public Policy, MBA), and enjoyed a successful stint in corporate America before returning to …
Brady Robinson – Climber, Educator, Outdoor Advocate
Brady Robinson is the Executive Director of the Access Fund, a conservation and advocacy organization that helps to protect climbing areas throughout the United States. Despite being a relatively small non-profit, the Access Fund’s work has a broad ripple effect far beyond the climbing community and extends into areas of conservation, public lands policy, and general outdoor …
Lloyd Athearn – Protecting and Preserving Colorado’s Highest Peaks
Lloyd Athearn is the Executive Director of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative (CFI), a non-profit organization whose mission is to protect and preserve the natural integrity of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks through active stewardship and public education. CFI’s work includes building and maintaining trails, educating hikers and climbers on best practices in the high country, conserving the native …
Erik Glenn – Saving Colorado, One Ranch at a Time
Erik Glenn is the Executive Director of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, a land conservation organization that has protected over 465,000 acres of working ranches throughout the state of Colorado. In this episode, Ed and Erik discuss a wide array of topics including the importance of keeping ranches in agricultural production, the basics of …
