WILDEARTH GUARDIANS WORKS TO PROTECT AND RESTORE THE WILDLIFE, WILD PLACES, WILD RIVERS, AND HEALTH OF THE AMERICAN WEST.

WildEarth Guardians envisions a world where wildlife and wild places are respected and valued and ou

Goal One: End the biodiversity crisis and usher in an era of coexistence by protecting imperiled species, end the use of snares, traps and poisons on public lands, and confront inhumane treatment of wildlife.

Goal Two: End destructive fossil fuel exploitation and extraction on public lands, democratize, decentralize, and decarbonize our nations’ power systems, and take decisive climate change and clean air action.

Goal Three: Protect and reconnect the American West’s wild landscapes to provide intact habitat for wildlife, clean water for native fish and human communities, and wild places for people to explore and recharge.

Guardians invested in a multi-day training by the Management Center for all staff who currently manage or might soon manage employees to help create a shared understanding about management and mentorship. Along with this, we created a library of tools for staff. Guardians also created and filled a new leadership level position, a Director of People & Culture, to guide our diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice work; serve as human resource lead; and focus on internal staff development, support, and professional growth. This person meets individually with managers to support them in working with their direct reports to identify internal opportunities for leadership growth and to identify training, coaching, and other opportunities to develop professionally. In addition, we recently revised our annual staff review/evaluation forms to include a leadership development section and all final reviews going forward will include individualized development recommendations and next steps

With the recent period of uncertainty and upheaval that arose from the COVID pandemic, awareness of the extent to which the country is divided, increasing violence, increasing disparity in opportunities and income, and the racial awakening and reckoning (highlighted by the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor–among so many others), Guardians realized we needed to adjust how we operate internally in supporting our staff and engaging those outside of our organization. Thus, Guardians prioritized creating and filling a new leadership position–Director of People & Culture. This position focuses on ensuring both that staff are well-cared for, supported, and given growth opportunities, and that the organization continues to evolve in its diversity, justice, equity, and inclusion work internally and externally. Guardians has changed some policies and we are in the midst of a significant revision of our employee manual to ensure staff well-being, provide clarity on what support is available to staff in these troubling times, and to deepen our commitment to inclusivity. Here are three examples of how Guardians evolved and adapted. First, we created a new policy adding flexibility to what holidays staff take and recognize, whether they be Juneteenth, Yom Kippur, Kwanzaa, Indigenous People’s day, Eid al-Fitr, or others. Second, we revamped our hiring practices to better reach a diversity of communities and candidates with open positions, including anonymizing applications to decrease any implicit bias in the review process. Third, recognizing that all students don’t have the ability to do an internship without pay, especially those from disadvantaged communities, we created a paid internship program to provide learning opportunities to a broader audience.