Jeff Fields and Randi Movich

Zumwalt Prairie Preserve Project Director, The Nature Conservancy

Nurse Care Manager, Winding Waters Clinic

Enterprise, OR

8/22/2021

Twelve years ago, Jeff Fields and Randi Movich moved to the small town of Enterprise in Wallowa County, Oregon, and began to connect with disparate groups within the rural community.

Jeff is The Nature Conservancy’s Project Director for the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve, a 33,000-acre section of land in northeastern Oregon that represents the largest intact bunchgrass habitat in the Pacific Northwest. Jeff is in charge of the management of the prairie, which includes grassland monitoring and working with local landowners to manage livestock grazing on the prairie. He has also recently worked with several tribes whose traditional homelands include the prairie, including the Nez Perce (Niimíipuu), to open access to First Foods.

When The Nature Conservancy first bought the land in 2000, anxiety soared as local community members questioned whether the environmental group would continue to allow cattle to graze on the land. To assuage those fears, The Nature Conservancy partnered with local ranchers to make the preserve available for grazing while attempting to retain healthy native grasses. According to Jeff, this grazing is critical to working in Wallowa County, saying that saving land purely for biodiversity reasons is “[a luxury the] majority of the planet, at this point in time, doesn’t have.”

Randi, a nurse at the community health clinic and Jeff’s wife, says that many local voices are often not present in these ecological management conversations. As a part of her job, Randi gets an intimate glance at a different set of Wallowa County residents’ lives. Many Wallowa County residents remain below the poverty line. Randi says while The Nature Conservancy works with local stakeholders with land or family ties on the prairie, those without — including those that she works with on a daily basis — aren’t represented in groups like those currently working with the Zumwalt Prairie .

“What voices do we bring to the table, and how do we get them to the table?” she asked.

Jeff and The Nature Conservancy are currently hoping to incorporate more ideas and viewpoints within the management of the Zumwalt.

“The human capital we have in this community… is really amazing,” Jeff said. “If you can get all that energy harnessed in a common vision, that supports both the economy and culture — then that’s amazing, that’s where we’re trying to go.”

By Emma Fletcher-Frazer