Mission

The Santa Fe Conservation Trust is dedicated to preserving the spirit of place among the communities of northern New Mexico by protecting open spaces and critical wildlife habitat, by creating trails, and by protecting the traditional landscapes of our diverse cultures.

Vision

This mission aims to protect and enhance key natural areas, ranch and agricultural lands, river and stream corridors, trails, and the natural open lands that define and sustain our rich and memorable landscape.

We accomplish our mission by working with people in culturally diverse communities in ways that enhance community values, create meaningful connections between people and the land, preserve heritage and encourage collaborative action.

Westerners are shaped by the land, held by its distances, fed by its grasses and grains, protected by its ridges and ranges. We obtain water in the arroyos, shelter beneath cottonwoods and pinons, and derive our cultures from the trails that have linked us to the Aztecs, Chaco, Mexico, and Missouri. This is our past and we hold it in trust for our future.

The Santa Fe Conservation Trust (The Trust) was founded in 1993 and received its 501(c) (3) status in December of 1993. The 501(c) (3) designation is a Federal IRS designation which means that people may donate to The Conservation Trust and receive a tax deduction.

Future

The Trust has now been in existence for over 15 years. The foremost purpose of any land trust is to protect its easements in perpetuity. While attaining that goal, we are also working hard for recognition of the SFCT name as your local land trust. The long term continuation of the trust is dependent upon community support. Please click here for ways you can contribute to the Trust.

History

For a history of our organization click here.

SFCT Staff

Charlie O’Leary, Executive Director

Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Charlie O’Leary has lived in Santa Fe with his wife Lily for the last ten years.  He earned a B.A. in Environmental Sciences from Prescott College and a M.S. in Resource Management from Antioch new England Graduate School in Keene, New Hampshire.  After graduating from Prescott College, Charlie spent almost three years living and working full time in the Pacific islands of Micronesia.   First in Saipan and then later in Chuuk, he helped establish a marine biology program for high school aged students as a layman at a prominent Jesuit school.

Before accepting the Executive Director position at the Santa Fe Conservation Trust, Charlie was employed for 8 years with The Trust for Public Land.  Based out of Santa Fe, he worked on a variety of conservation transaction throughout the southwest including Arizona, Utah and Colorado.  After consulting with the Santa Fe Conservation Trust for eighteen months on their conservation easement program, Charlie became Executive Director in March, 2010.

In his spare time he enjoys building custom bicycle frames and exploring trails throughout the state.

Rici Peterson, Development Director

Rici Peterson has been helping groups  generate support for conservation for over twenty years when she started as a Nature Conservancy employee. Before  joining the Trust in 2006, she was a consultant to non-profits, eco-tourism businesses, and government agencies in interpretive communications planning and  training, natural lands management, and heritage tourism development. She still does some part-time interpretive consulting and certifies professional  interpreters for the National Association for Interpretation. Now serving part-time as our Development Director, Rici was Executive Director of the Trust from 2006-2010.

Melissa Houser, Conservation & Development Coordinator

Born and raised in Santa Fe, Melissa Houser brings a wealth of administrative skills and an academic research background to the Trust. Melissa and her husband, Will Houser returned in 2008, to the United States from Ireland, where Melissa earned a Masters of Philosophy in Irish Theatre and Film. Melissa’s previous work includes Office Manager, Database Administrator, Marketing Coordinator and Website Administrator. Melissa is dedicated to helping to protect the planet that we all share.

Mary Pat Butler – Part-time Administrator

Mary Pat Butler has been involved in the non-profit world for over 25 years, most recently as Director of Development at St. Michael’s High School.  Her experience includes fundraising, special events and public relations.  She also works part time as a legal assistant with the law firm of Timothy L. Butler and is an active member of the Rotary Club of Santa Fe.

SFCT Board of Directors 2010

Executive Committee

Jim Jenkins, Board Chair

Jim Jenkins has served in private and public sectors with experience in education, training and customer service, and volunteered on non-profit boards, focusing on major donor fundraising. During his years in Pennsylvania, Jim served as chair of a municipal planning commission with responsibility for land use planning and policy formulation. At that time, he became interested in land preservation and worked at the local and regional level with property owners to preserve rural farmland. He is currently President of the board of the Eldorado Area Water and Sanitation District, which serves a community of over 7,000 residents.

Jim has been active with the Trust over the past three years, volunteering to help with monitoring easements. He has served as chair of the Trust’s Land Committee since 2008.

Bob Pierce, Treasurer

Bob Pierce was born in Maryland and lived many years in the Baltimore area. He received a BS in accounting with high honors at the University of Maryland. He is a financial expert with impressive former positions which include Executive VP and CFO of Carson, Inc., Maybelline, Inc and Noxell Corporation. Earlier in his career, he was an audit manager for Arthur Young and Company.

Bob has two sons in Baltimore and four grandchildren. He is married to Pam Pierce and together they share an interest in music. Bob is a former Board Member of Chamber Music Hilton Head and the Savannah Symphony Society. He plays both piano and guitar.

Bob leads a busy life, but when he’s in Santa Fe, he volunteers as the CFO of Silver Bullet Productions, a small non-profit which produces educational films.

Connie Bright, Vice Chair

Connie divides her time between Oklahoma City and Santa Fe. For many years she was a board member, teacher and girls’ basketball coach at Westminster School and a teacher of ESL at a refugee center, both located in Oklahoma City. Connie and her husband, Bob, bought their home in Santa Fe in 1980. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Connie currently serves on the board of the Oklahoma City Myriad Gardens Foundation and has been an active SFCT volunteer, including serving as co-chair of the Stewart Udall Environmental Award Dinner since 2004. Her other interests including hiking, gardening, cooking and travel.

Tom Simons, Secretary

Tom Simons, trial lawyer, is a well-known and highly respected trial attorney and founder of The Simons Firm in Santa Fe. He formed Friends of Atalaya in 1986, helping to create and preserve trails on that mountain. He has served on the board of Santa Fe Prep and is currently serving as Chairman of the Board of Las Golondrinas. Says Tom, “The myth of the limitless West is coming to an end. Idle criticism of the disappearance of trails and open space will no longer suffice. We must, by our actions, work to preserve the natural heritage with which we all have been blessed.”

Elizabeth Baxter, At-Large

A passion for Cow Creek Canyon in the upper Pecos watershed—the site of family vacations spent riding, fishing and hiking—led Betty Baxter, a native Texan, to Santa Fe in 1992. As a member of the Trust’s land committee, she coordinates our conservation easement monitoring program; she serves on the Trust’s development and nominating committees as well.  Betty is a public relations consultant who trains members of non-profits and businesses to do their own PR and uses her PR expertise to help involve the community in Trust activities. She has been an adviser to several Santa Fe non-profits and served on boards here and in California and New York. She and her husband John, a research historian, have four daughters and one grandson.

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Margaret Alexander

Margaret Alexander was born and raised in Sebastopol, California and attended the University of California, Riverside and the University of Oregon where she earned a degree in Library Science. Margaret also received a Masters degree in History from Northern Illinois University.

When she is not working as the Librarian for the Santa Fe Institute, or hiking area trails, Margaret is busy serving on the Board of the  the Alliance for Innovation in Science and Technology Information and promoting the development of trails and trails stewardship in Santa Fe; she’s an active member of the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe.

She and her husband, David, have two sons. Christian is a law student at CU-Boulder and Martin is employed at an engineering firm in Albuquerque.

Andy Ault

Andy Ault recently returned to Santa Fe in 2005, trading his East Coast Wall Street job for a long-term stint in Santa Fe’s dynamic and different real estate market. While working at Santa Fe Properties, Andy’s broader background and interest in community conservation steered him to the Trust. He co-chaired the Lewisboro, NY Open Space Committee from 2001-2005, when watershed preservation efforts were a top priority throughout the State. With his wide business interests, Andy is also a member of Wells Fargo Bank Community Board.

Andy brings high energy and a passion for the work. He hopes to focus on improving our mapping of local greenbelt properties, setting more visible land priorities to help broaden community participation in our programs, and helping to protect more of New Mexico’s strategic and unique open space under conservation easements. Andy is an active participant on the Trust’s land committee.

Murray Brott

Murray Brott has been in the real estate investment and development business since 1972, specializing in commercial property. He is in the process of converting a large chain of self storage facilities throughout New Mexico to solar energy. Murray and his wife Cindy moved to Santa Fe in 1979 to create an ideal life for themselves and their three children. “Ideal” to the Brott family means wide open spaces, clean air, mountains, blue sky and diversity. Says Murray, “I want to do anything I can to preserve the wonderful environment we have here in New Mexico.”

Murray has served previously on the boards of the Santa Fe Mountain Center and the Santa Fe Ski Team. His other interests include photography, adventure travel, tennis, skiing, golf and hiking.

Jill Cooper Udall

Jill Cooper came to Santa Fe from New York City in 1974 with her daughter Amanda in search of adventure. One of the first 100 women lawyers in the state, she had a varied and interesting law career from which she retired in 1999 to follow her husband, Senator (formerly Congressman) Tom Udall, to Washington where she is currently under contract to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. She continues to be active on the boards of several educational and cultural institutions in Santa Fe.

Bill Cowles

Bill Cowles joined the Board in the fall of 2001. Raised in Connecticut, London, and New York, he graduated from Yale (BA) and MIT (B. Arch) and practiced architecture from his firm in Shelburne, VT. He has also served as Secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Human Services, Chairman of the Vermont Environmental Board, Chairman of the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, and founding Director of Sugarbush Valley Ski Area.

In 1975, Bill bought Pine Cay and the Meridian Club in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where he planned, built, developed and managed the island as an environmentally and socially responsible resort until 1983. In Santa Fe since 1984, Bill owns Los Trigos Ranch in Rowe, NM.

Former board participation includes the Santa Fe Community Foundation, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian and the Santa Fe Mountain Center. Current boards include the School of American Research, and a founding director and chair of EGIS (Elders Getting Information and Services).

David Henderson

David Henderson brings with him a lifetime of outstanding conservation work in New Mexico, serving as Executive Director of Audubon New Mexico from 1985  to 2007.  David is currently the program director for Santa Fe Farmer’s Market Institute. He brings his love of trails, the outdoors, and the northern New Mexican community to the Trust. He and his wife Juliana have lived in Santa Fe for many years.

Brad Holian

Brad Lee Holian, a New Mexican since 1972, is a semi-retired theoretical physicist with Los Alamos Lab. A native of Wyoming, Brad knew, after finishing at Caltech and UC Berkeley, that he wanted to plant himself and his scientific career in the Rocky Mountain West. Since arriving here he’s spent every spare minute fishing northern New Mexico’s tiny streams, hiking with his two sons in the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo ranges, cross-country skiing, and, in his dotage, taking up horseback riding in the Rio Pojoaque and the badlands of the Barrancas. He and his wife Kathy (who currently holds office as a Santa Fe County Commissioner) also enjoy riding their horses along Seton Arroyo and into Sunlit Hills, accompanied by their four dogs.

Over the past decade, Brad and Kathy have placed two properties on Glorieta Mesa under conservation easement to the Trust. Though they first regarded their land as a recreational preserve for riding and hiking, it soon dawned on them that ownership requires an investment beyond the purchase price and that stewardship is the first calling of a landowner (or, as Brad says, “one whose heart is owned by the land”). First repairing the erosion caused by a poorly designed road, the Holian’s land stewardship now consists of annual remediation to restore overgrazed grasslands and overcrowded forests. Brad brings these lessons—along with his commitment to help the Trust broaden its outreach to agricultural landowners—to the Board of the Trust.

Richard Hughes

Richard Hughes is a partner in the Santa Fe office of the Rothstein Law Firm. As a specialist in federal Indian law, he represents several Indian tribes in New Mexico.  Together with a group of friends who share an affinity for the Pecos River Canyon, Richard has helped acquire and place under conservation easement several tracts along the Pecos River near the town of Ilfeld, and has become a true believer in the power of such devices as a means of protecting what little open space we have left.

Jim Leonard

Jim Leonard serves as head of school at Santa Fe Prep, a position he has held since 1999. Jim and his wife Story have three daughters: Kelsey, Molly, and Campbell. In his 20 years in the field of education, Jim has taught English, served as director of development, been a dean of faculty, and coached soccer and squash. He and Story lived and worked for seven years at The Mountain School of Milton Academy, a semester program for high school juniors in central Vermont focused on ecology, community, and personal identity.

A longtime mountain biker, trail runner, and skier, Jim is interested in preserving beautiful spaces as well as sustainable use practices. Santa Fe Prep’s new library, opened in 2006, is the first gold-level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building in New Mexico. He has served on the boards of The Santa Fe Children’s Museum and The Yellowstone Association, and was recently elected to the Board of The United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico.

Terry Smith

Terry Smith has enjoyed a thirty year career in public policy, national issues consulting, public relations and management. After completing graduate studies at Florida State University, Terry was the Staff Director for the National Governors’ Association’s Executive Management and Fiscal Affairs Committee and later founded VTS Limited, a Washington-based government affairs consulting firm.

In 1993, Terry joined the National Geographic Society as Executive Director of its Education Foundation and established the Society’s first development office, managing its fund-raising operations.

Terry moved to New Mexico in 1995 and with his wife and colleague, Susan Munroe, founded The Casados Group to assist clients interested in improving elementary and secondary education. Smith and Munroe volunteer at various arts and education organizations and serve on local philanthropic boards.

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Advisory Board

Janie Bingham, Advisory Board Member

Janie has served in many capacities for the Trust; staff member under Dale Ball; board member 1990-2000; Executive Director 2001-2003; board member 2004 to the present including tours as Chair and Vice Chair. Her love of Santa Fe is deeply tied to the mission of the Trust and the wonderful community it touches. She is currently on the board of KSFR public radio; she also loves to sing with the Sangre de Cristo Chorale and tend to her lovely husband George.

Craig Barnes, Advisory Board Member

Craig Barnes, who was member of the SFCT Board from 2001- 2005, is a retired trial lawyer who for many years did public interest and environmental litigation in Colorado and New Mexico. In the 80s and 90s he was a negotiator in the Soviet Union on questions affecting the cold war, and thereafter in the Caucasus on issues of ethnic cleansing. Most recently he was a negotiator/facilitator on behalf of USAID in Central Asia on questions of multinational distribution of international rivers. His books include Growing Up True: Lessons from a Western Boyhood, (2001); In Search of the Lost Feminine: Decoding the Myths that Radically Reshaped Civilization, (2006), and Democracy At the Crossroads (autumn 2009), and his plays include an Elizabethan Trilogy performed in Santa Fe (2001-2008), and A Nation Deceived, performed in Santa Fe and Los Angeles (2006). He is a frequent commentator on public radio.

Chris Larsen, Advisory Board Member

Chris was the founder, president and publisher of Imprint, a group of suburban weekly newspapers around Hartford, CT. During the 1970s and 1980s Chris served on the boards of Hartford’s major cultural and educational institutions, becoming president of both the Hartford Symphony and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. After selling his publishing company in 1990, Chris and his wife Jan adopted Santa Fe as their second community where he became involved with the Desert Chorale, The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Santa Fe Conservation Trust.