Opportunity

Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC), named one of Outside Magazine’s Top 100 places to work two years in a row, seeks a Senior Climate Conservation Associate to play a key role in our work with communities, tribes, agencies, partners, and stakeholders to improve climate resilience and adaptation within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). The GYE is a remarkable natural landscape: home to a complete array of native wildlife, the headwaters of the west, an important place in the history of conservation, and of deep importance to Native Americans who have made this place home since time immemorial.

The Senior Climate Conservation Associate (SCCA) plays a key role in GYC’s work to conserve the lands, waters, and wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Working with the Climate Change Coordinator and other GYC staff, the SCCA will help develop and execute GYC programs, campaigns, and projects across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that achieve GYC’s climate and conservation goals. Primarily, the SCCA will be responsible for helping develop and implement an ecosystem-wide program to identify priority watersheds as climate refugia, implement low-tech restoration projects, promote community floodplain protections, protect priority streams and rivers in southern Montana through Wild and Scenic Rivers designations, and build community support to address climate impacts to native fish and waters.

The position will also work with the Deputy Director of Conservation and other conservation staff to help develop and shape local, state, and federal policies on these issues. These campaigns are ecosystem-wide, with a portion of the work focused on Montana watersheds.

Specific duties include coordinating with federal and state partnerships to identify watersheds that are suitable for low-tech restoration projects, leading fieldwork to build beaver dam analogues, restore beaver habitat, and protecting climate refugia through land management planning processes. The SCCA may also research and develop appropriate climate and water-related policy by developing and maintaining working relationships with key partners including agency officials, elected representatives, landowners, conservation organizations, indigenous communities, and other influential leaders.

The SCCA will be a critical member of Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s conservation team, as this position will be involved in proactive, landscape scale conservation. Teamwork is a core competency at GYC, making close coordination between GYC’s other offices and departments an essential duty of this position.