Keeping Our Promise of “Forever”
Written by Jaimi Butler, Stewardship and Outreach Director
I have a confession to make. I've been thinking and writing about Ute Ladies Tresses so much lately that I'm pretty sure my friends are going to stage an intervention. I just can't shut up about them.
In my recent article, It Takes a Village, I wrote about how these rare native orchids spend years, sometimes a decade, lurking completely underground in the dark before finally sending up their delicate, spiraling white blooms in the late summer sun. Ironically, this invisible, subterranean lifestyle perfectly describes my coworkers.
To the rest of the world, Gabe and Matt’s behind-the-scenes work is practically invisible as they stay buried in an underground ecosystem of land transactions, water rights, complex negotiations and endless paperwork. But in reality, they have been operating exactly like those dormant orchid protocorms, quietly laying the groundwork for our conservation mission. And just like the orchids, all that hard work is finally pushing through the turf. Land deals are solidifying, land protections are securing habitat in perpetuity, and the fruits of those underground efforts are bursting into full view for our whole community to admire.
This brings me to my role as Stewardship Director. If Gabe and Matt are doing the heavy lifting underground to acquire land and protect open space and working farms, my job begins when we sprout into the sunlight.
While land acquisition creates the promise of conservation, stewardship keeps that promise forever. Let me be honest with you: that ongoing care is not always orchids, butterflies and high-adventure fieldwork. Some days it means sitting at my desk doing the essential, unglamorous work of writing stewardship policies, drafting standard operating procedures, and compiling annual reports to document every corner of the land.
Those exhaustive reports are far more than administrative paperwork though. They are a legal and ecological snapshot of the land (in the land trust world we call them a Baseline Documentation Report) frozen in time from the moment each property was protected. When I step out onto the land I hold that initial snapshot up against today’s living landscape to compare plant health, water resources, and boundary lines. This work ensures that the land remains healthy and that each land’s conservation values are upheld and protected from the day the agreement was signed.
Photos taken of an upcoming project during a baseline documentation trip.
At its heart, stewardship is about relationships and reciprocity. In the orchid world, once that tiny sprout hits the sunlight, its one-way dependency on the fungus transforms into a two-way street, sharing fresh sugars created through photosynthesis in exchange for continued access to water and nutrients. Conservation works the exact same way. It isn't a one-sided transaction where we simply “manage” nature, but an active reciprocal relationship between people, ecosystems and local communities. We care for their land, and in return, the land sustains our wildlife, our watershed, and our human spirit.
You see that reciprocity clearly when you go out in the field during monitoring season. Recently at the Bear Lake Preserve, I spent the day monitoring alongside one of Bear River Land Conservancy’s founders, Bryan Dixon. He is in his 70’s now, but calling him a mountain goat might actually be an understatement as he charges through, over, and under absolutely anything in his path with unyielding energy. Scrambling across the terrain behind him showed me the raw grit that built Bear River Land Conservancy in its early volunteer-driven days. It is a lineage of reciprocal effort: our founders poured their energy into protecting the land and in return, the preserve rewarded us with the full spectrum of a thriving ecosystem. First, it offered up the most breathtaking wild irises I have ever seen (see below). Then it gave us a fierce reminder of who this land really belongs to. Out of nowhere a Northern harrier dive bombed us multiple times. This was a spectacular, heart pounding experience that I have never had before. I thought the bird was going to carry Bryan away while screeching loudly! That fierce defense of its territory is the ultimate form of reciprocity. We do the hard work to protect the land, and in return the land stays uncompromisingly wild.
I felt that same deep connection at the Evans Ranch, where I walked the easement alongside two generations of the Evans family. As we traversed the landscape, we shared stories of their family's' deep history on the working ranch, which is beautifully interwoven with the profound cultural heritage of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. In addition to supporting cattle grazing since the late 1800s, the property protects the sacred Sagwitch Basin which is sacred to the tribe as a home burial ground, a refuge from war, a fall encampment, and a lookout point. I was also able to see the new wildlife-friendly fencing the family has installed over the past two years, a labor of love that sustains their agricultural operation while keeping crucial winter range and big game migration routes open. This is reciprocity in action: honoring the land's deep cultural roots, supporting the ranchers who nurture it, and ensuring the landscape continues to nourish both their livelihood and our migrating wildlife.
From subterranean fungi nourishing orchid seeds to staff negotiating land deals in their basements and from detailed desk reports to ranch families retrofitting fences, conservation truly takes an interconnected village. I am honored to cultivate these relationships as your Stewardship Director and look forward to the years to come.
While comparing wild orchids to Bear River Land Conservancy staff is fun, this is where our organizational lives diverge from the plant world in two notable ways:
We need built in reserves: unlike orchid seeds that drift onto the wind with zero built in energy reserves, a land trust actually needs its own “endosperm”. Before taking on a project, we have to pack heavy reserve funds, baseline documentation reports, and legal structures so the land remains protected forever.
No 11-year long naps: We can't take an eleven year nap when things get tough. If environmental conditions turn harsh, a Ute ladies-tress can completely drop its leaves and stay dormant underground. A land trust does not get to hit the snooze button when the economy is rough or the weather is relentless.
Stewardship requires continuous annual care and monitoring every single year.
