Staff and Senior Fellows

Matthew McKinney is Director of the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at The University of Montana where his work focuses on collaborative approaches to natural resource and environmental policy.

Prior to his current position, Matthew served as the founding director of the Montana Consensus Council for 10 years. During the past 20-plus years, he has designed, facilitated, and mediated over 50 public processes on issues related to federal land, water, fish and wildlife, land use, regional planning and resource management, and other public issues. He received a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Policy and Conflict Resolution from The University of Michigan; has published numerous articles in journals and books; co-authored The Western Confluence: A Guide to Governing Natural Resources (Island Press, 2004); and teaches workshops, seminars, and courses on natural resource policy and public dispute resolution.

Matthew is an Adjunct Professor at The University of Montana’s School of Law; Chair of the Natural Resource Conflict Resolution Program (the only graduate-level certificate program of its kind in North America); Senior Associate at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; and Senior Partner with the Consensus Building Institute. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, and was a research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 2000 and 2002. 

When he is not working on natural resource and environmental issues, he can be found hiking, fishing, floating, and otherwise enjoying the outdoors.

See a profiled of selected cases.

Click here to send Matt an email or here to see a list of Matt's publications.

Sarah Bates is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Montana. She holds a J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law (1988) and a B.S. in Wildlife Biology and Political Science from Colorado State University (1984). She is a member of the State Bars of California and Montana.

Ms. Bates has written and spoken extensively on natural resources policy and law, with an emphasis on western water resources and public resource governance institutions. Her most recent book (co-edited with Larry MacDonnell) is The Evolution of Natural Resources Law and Policy (American Bar Association, 2010), and she will be a co-author of the forthcoming Water Resource Management: A Casebook on Law and Public Policy (7^th ed.), with Dan Tarlock, David Getches, Jim Corbridge, and Reed Benson.

During the 2012-13 academic year, Ms. Bates is supervising third-year law students enrolled in the Indian Law Clinic at the University of Montana School of Law, with projects focused on the intersection of natural resources law and tribal sovereignty.  She is also coordinating a research project in partnership with the Land Trust Alliance, examining opportunities for land trusts to protect and restore streamflows using conservation easements and other strategies.

Ms. Bates served on the advisory board of the William Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming from 2001-09, and on the governing board the Clark Fork Coalition from 2005-11. She is currently the President of the Clark Fork Coalition board, serves as a member of the advisory board of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School, and participates in the Carpe Diem West network on climate change and western water (see interview).

Stephan Edwards helps direct the graduate education program at the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy. An alumni of the Center’s Natural Resources Conflict Resolution certificate program, he is currently a Doctoral candidate in Applied Anthropology at the University of Montana and Faculty Affiliate at UM’s Davidson Honors College. Stephan holds a Master’s Degree in History and Human Rights Studies from the University of Connecticut and a Master’s Degree in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University. He was formerly a Director of freshman programs at the University of Montana, Visiting Lecturer in History at Salem State University, and Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Central Wyoming College.

 

Stephan is also co-editor of Beyond Article 19: Libraries and Social and Cultural Rights (2009), and his research engages with questions of community identity, human rights and public institutions, cross-cultural understandings of wilderness and natural resource policies, and environmental conflict resolution. He has worked on diverse projects researching land use policy in Montana’s Ravalli County, leading education seminars for the Wyoming Water Quality and Pollution Control Association, and organizing the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent. Stephan is an active volunteer at the Missoula Community Dispute Resolution Center, and lives with his wife in the shadow of Mt. Jumbo in Missoula, Montana.

Shawn is a Senior Associate at the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Montana.  For the past five years, he has helped advance a joint effort between the Center and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on regional collaboration and large landscape conservation.  The joint effort explores questions of policy, leadership, and governance at regional or landscape scales, where there is often a mismatch between the scale of an existing challenge or opportunity and that of existing organizations and jurisdictions.  In May 2011, Shawn helped organize and convene a group of large landscape conservation practitioners that led to a new network of practitioners throughout North America who are working to improve community and conservation outcomes at the large landscape scale. Shawn is co-author, with Matthew McKinney of Working Across Boundaries: People, Nature, and Regions (Lincoln Institute, 2009). He also contributed to Large Landscape Conservation, A Strategic Framework for Policy and Action (Lincoln Institute, 2010) and Remarkable Beyond Borders: People and Landscapes in the Crown of the Continent (Sonoran Institute, 2010).  Prior to his work at the Center, Shawn earned a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and spent three years as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Max Baucus.

Patrick Field is Managing Director of North American Programs at CBI and Associate Director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program. Patrick has helped thousands of stakeholders reach agreement on natural resource, land use, water, and air issues across the United States and Canada. He is experienced at working with diverse large groups, including those in high conflict and those seeking collaborative action. Further, he has worked with socially disadvantaged, Native American, First Nation, and other diverse organizations and groups. Patrick works often with and between local, regional, state, and federal governments. He is a dynamic trainer and lecturer, delivering curricula to professionals across sectors in the U.S. and globally. Patrick is listed on the roster of conflict resolution professionals of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution and the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution. He holds an M.C.P. in Urban Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is co-author of the award-winning book, Dealing with an Angry Public, as well as numerous journal articles and research papers. He was born and raised on a ranch in rural western Colorado and currently resides in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Daniel Kemmis is the author of 3 books: Community and The Politics of Place; The Good City and the Good Life; and This Sovereign Land: A New Vision for Governing the West. A past director of The University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West, Mr. Kemmis was formerly Mayor of Missoula, Montana, and he served as both Speaker and Minority Leader of the Montana House of Representatives. Mr. Kemmis serves on the Board of Directors of Philanthropy Northwest, the Kettering and Northwest Area Foundations, and the Missoula Redevelopment Agency. He is a graduate of Harvard University and The University of Montana School of Law.

In May of 2010, the Policy Consensus Initiative Board presented the Ruckelshaus Award for Collaborative Leadership to Daniel Kemmis.

Dr. Delli Priscoli is senior advisor USACE at the Institute for Water Resources. For 30 years he has designed and run social assessment, public participation and conflict resolution research and training programs. Dr Delli Priscoli is a skilled mediator and facilitator and works throughout the world. He serves on the Board of Governors and the Bureau of the World Water Council, the Inter-American Water Resources Network and works with, and has helped found several other world associations such as the International Association for Pubic Participation, the World Water Council and the Global Water Partnership. Dr. Delli Priscoli has been advisor to the World Bank on water policy and to all of the UN water related agencies on water policy issues. Dr. Delli Priscoli works closely with many of the Water Ministers throughout the world. He was an original member of the U.S. delegation to the middle east Peace talks on water. He has advised all the US major commands, US Department of State and most of the US intelligence agencies on water and security. Dr. Delli Priscoli co-chaired the DG of UNESCO’s world commission on Water and Freshwater Ethics. He is author of many articles and books including Water and Civilization and a new volume from Cambridge U Press, Transforming Water Conflicts. He is on science advisory committee of Oxford University water and security as well as the Tufts/Fletcher School water program. Dr Delli Priscoli is a commentator on media shows and is the Editor in Chief of the peer reviewed journal Water Policy. He has played pivotal roles and facilitated many of the dialogs among senior diplomats and NGOs in each of the 5 World water forums and in most of the critical key water resources policy meetings over the last 15 years. He was on the international steering committee and the political committee for theWWF5 in Istanbul. Dr. Delli Priscoli has facilitated many US national water policy dialogs. The American Water Resources Association awarded him the Icko Iben award for achievement in cross disciplinary communications in water. He holds degrees in economics and political science and post doctoral studies in theological studies from Tufts and Georgetown Universities.

Former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Lynn Scarlett is Visiting Scholar and Co-Director of the Center for Management of Ecological Wealth at Resources for the Future working on issues pertaining to ecosystem services, landscape-scale conservation, and climate adaptation. She served as Zurich Financial Services Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in October 2009. From 2005 to January 2009, she served as the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Department of the Interior, a post she took on after 4 years as the Department's Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget. She served as Acting Secretary of the Department for two months in 2006.  Ms. Scarlett initiated Interior’s Cooperative Conservation Task Force in 2002 and chaired the Department's Climate Change Task Force. She is the author or co-author of recent publications on climate change adaptation; urban greening; large landscape conservation; offshore oil issues; and ecosystem services. She received her B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also completed her Ph.D. coursework and exams in political science. An avid hiker, Scarlett serves on the board of the American Hiking Society. Also an avid birder, she serves on the board of the National Wildlife Refuge Association. She also serves on the boards of the nonprofit environmental mediation organizations RESOLVE and the Consensus Building Institute. She is a trustee emeritus of the Udall Foundation.

A Missoula native, Ted worked summers for the U.S. Forest Service with three years as a smokejumper flying out of Missoula and Fairbanks, Alaska. He graduated from Pomona College with honors and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science at Cal/Berkeley in the 1960s. His 12-year Ford Foundation career began and ended in Jakarta, Indonesia (as country representative) with a 2-year stint midway as President Bundy’s assistant in New York preparing the Foundation’s $175 million budget. Following six years as president of John D. Rockefeller 3rd’s Agricultural Development Council focused on agricultural and resource policies in Asia and Africa, Ted became founding director of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity in 1987. During the 1980s and 1990s he served as a consultant to the World Bank (Indonesia and Bhutan), USAID (Indonesia), and the Rockefeller Foundation (International Program). He ran the Boston-based Kendall Foundation (1993-2009) where he developed American and Canadian programs in ocean fisheries policies, landscape conservation (Yellowstone to Yukon), watershed management and climate change-energy conservation. He currently serves on the boards of Earthjustice and Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Ted lives near Polson in Western Montana. (November 2011).

Trained as a wildlife veterinarian and ecologist (B.Sc. Cornell, V.M.D. UPenn, M.E.S. Yale), Gary Tabor is a conservation catalyst. His career spans 28 years of conservation work throughout the world. Gary’s notable conservation achievements include helping to establish Kibale National Park in Uganda; establishing the World Bank’s Mountain Gorilla Conservation Trust; championing the creation of the Yellowstone-to-Yukon Conservation Initiative; founding the Consortium for Conservation Medicine with EcoHealth Allinace, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine; instigating the creation of the Australia Environmental Grantmakers Association; establishing Wilburforce Foundation’s conservation science program and Y2Y field office; catalyzing the Western Governors Association wildlife corridor initiative; and co-founding Patagonia Company’s Freedom-to-Roam campaign to advance wildlife corridor conservation. Dr. Tabor has also served as the Environment Program Director for the Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation, the Associate Director of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation, and Y2Y Program Director for the Wilburforce Foundation. For the past two decades, Gary has been very active in developing the conservation capacity in the Greater Yellowstone and Crown of the Continent ecosystems. In 2007, Gary established the Center for Large Landscape Conservation to provide strategic planning services that advance ecological connectivity conservation and climate adaptation efforts for wildlife.

John E. Thorson is an attorney residing in western Montana after recently retiring as Assistant Chief Administrative Law Judge for the California Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco. He has 25 years of experience in water law and policy, as well as in the use of alternative dispute resolution methods in a variety of natural resource and environmental conflicts. From 2007-08, he was co-chair of a large multi-party facilitation (involving states, tribes, federal agencies, and other stakeholders) that resulted in the first major agreement in the Missouri River Basin after 15 years of contentious litigation. Over his career, he has completed policy or legal work in almost every western river basin.

 

Thorson is the former Special Master for the Arizona General Stream Adjudication and the former Director of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. He is the co-founder and a continuing co-convenor of Dividing the Waters, an educational program for state and federal judges involved in complex water litigation. He served as chair of the American Bar Association’s Water Resources Committee. He is the author or co-author of four books and over 50 articles. Thorson has served as adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California, University of San Francisco School of Law, University of Arizona College of Law, and the University of Montana School of Law. He is a member of the state bars of Montana, Arizona (inactive), California (inactive), and New Mexico (inactive). He holds a DPA from USC, a JD from the University of California (Berkeley), and a BA from the University of New Mexico.