An Update from our Stewardship Team

Winter 2026

Shay Brown, Stewardship Manager

Looking back over the past year, can you share a moment or project during stewardship or easement monitoring that really stood out to you — something that made you feel proud of the impact we’re having on these forests?

Cattle grazing in Sierra Valley, California, where PFT established some of its first easements.

I feel proud of our ongoing stewardship work when we start to work with new landowners of conservation easements that we have held for a long time. For example, earlier this year I met with Jennifer Kun — the new landowner of Calpine Meadow Ranch, located in the Sierra Valley area. PFT has held a conservation easement on the Property since 2010, and it has been exciting to not only witness a new landowner’s excitement over the special Conservation Values on the Property (including the Property’s mixed-conifer and aspen forests, scenic wet meadows, and sprawling rangeland), but also to work with a landowner who is already experienced in and committed to sustainable land management. Ms. Kun has periodically shared joyful stories with me of wildlife sightings — such as various, grazing black bears — and peaceful moments watching the sunset over the rolling meadows.

Lyndia Hammer, Stewardship Associate

What aspect of our stewardship work or the impact of our easements inspires you the most and keeps you motivated every day?

Longtime PFT partner Jud Parsons, whose Mountcrest property is conserved by PFT.

What inspires and motivates me about our stewardship work is the knowledge that the targets for forest management have been developed and informed by the best possible knowledge and science about forests, wildlife, and wildlife habitat needs, ensuring that forest management not only yields wood, and protects water sources, but actively conserves and protects wildlife habitat for a huge range of species as well.

What inspires me about the impact of conservation easements is that it allows someone like Jud Parsons (right) to secure his legacy of wholistic forest management for generations to come.

Jack Singer, Stewardship Director, RPF #3247

What is one area of stewardship that you find particularly interesting?

One area of stewardship that I find particularly interesting is restoration management. I still think our work with broadcast burning — both on forests we manage directly and on forests where we hold conservation easements — is the neatest aspect of PFT’s stewardship role. It’s been exciting to see our landowners increasingly rely on fire as an ecological management tool, and to watch these practices evolve so quickly. PFT is really positioned as a leader in this movement among forest conservationists, landowners, and managers in both states.

That said, anadromy and large predator conservation will always feel like the most important outcomes of our work to me. To get a little romantic about it, I think of this as a kind of framework for the greatest ecological questions facing the nonhuman inhabitants of the western hemisphere this century: Can we maintain and coexist with populations of anadromous fish and large carnivores in North America? Whenever I get to live my life in service of helping our species answer “yes” to either point — salmon and steelhead trout, or large carnivores — it feels deeply gratifying.

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