Greater Yellowstone Director Receives Keystone Award

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The Nature Conservancy’s Greater Yellowstone Program Director, Paul Hansen, was recently selected to receive the prestigious Keystone Center 2008 Leadership in the Environment Award due to his exemplary leadership, consensus-building and positive impact in the environmental community. Joining leaders in education, industry and government, Paul will be honored at a Washington, D.C. event this June. “Paul was chosen for his incredible record of working with diverse stakeholders to improve the environment, and he exemplifies the science-based, solutions-oriented approach that is the heart of The Keystone Center,” said Senior Keystone Associate Jeremy Kranowitz.

The Keystone Center is a nonprofit organization founded in 1975 to ensure that present and future generations approach environmental and scientific dilemmas and disagreements creatively and proactively through deliberative frameworks, democratic processes, analytical information, and critical-thinking skills applied to tough problems and to the development of solutions. Previous winners of the Keystone Award for Leadership in the Environment include Pat Noonan, John Sawhill, Peter Seligman, Kathryn Fuller and Anne Ehrlich.

Living in a region of the country that is experiencing double the nation’s population growth rate, Paul is working to help craft innovative solutions to conservation and stewardship in the Greater Yellowstone area through collaboration with a host of key stakeholders in six priority landscapes. These irreplaceable habitats support one of the largest intact collections of wildlife in the lower 48 United States and the vital migratory corridors they need to survive. Working with the Conservancy’s Wyoming, Idaho and Montana programs, Paul collaborates with government agencies like the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service, public groups like the Heart of the Rockies and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and private ranchers and second homeowners regarding conservation, recreation and land use.

“We are thrilled that Paul has been recognized by the Keystone Center with such a prestigious award,” says Andrea Erickson, The Nature Conservancy’s Wyoming state director. “His collaborative approach to conservation has proven effective time and time again, and we know that his ability to work with others to find real solutions will greatly benefit the Greater Yellowstone region.”

An avid outdoorsman, hunter and angler, Paul adds this award to a long list of accomplishments including joint work with land trusts, environmental groups, sportsmen’s organizations and business interests as the former director of the Izaak Walton League of America. He has served on the boards of several conservation nonprofits, and he was a founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. Hansen chaired the “green group,” a forum of the CEOs of the major national environmental groups and he is one of the first conservationists to sit on the board of a Fortune 500 public company.

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