Kathleen Ackley

Executive Director, Wallowa Land Trust

Wallowa County, Oregon

8/20/21

Kathleen Ackley is the Executive Director of Wallowa Land Trust (WLT), a nonprofit focused on conserving land and maintaining its ecological health. In Wallowa County, where private land is tightly woven into the fabric of the valley, the land trust works to conserve parcels of land for myriad purposes, from grazing to recreating, for both people and wildlife. They rely on the voluntary participation of landowners to carry out their work in protecting lands identified as significant in terms of biological diversity, cultural connections, and educational value. Preserving the prominent glacial moraine on the east side of Wallowa Lake is a major project championed by WLT and for good reason: it is a window into our geologic past and keeps the skyline free of imposing mansions.

Through Kathleen’s eight years with WLT she has seen a shift in their responsibilities and practices. Maintaining workable land has become more of a central tenet in the land trust sphere, along with movements to return land stolen from indigenous peoples and take action against systemic racism. Kathleen knows that land trusts are not exempt from addressing these societal reckonings. In a statement released on their website, WLT lays bare the inequities they continue to hold central to their work. Kathleen engages with such issues through her efforts with the Oregon Land Justice Project, a group which works to amplify indigenous stewardship knowledge and provide a space to hear from Native American leaders and allies about making land management more equitable. Kathleen made it clear that this work is vital, saying “it is not just about taking their knowledge for our benefit, it is about facilitating reconnections…for people with their land and for people with people. This is the right way to move forward, but it is far from easy.”

By Ani Pham