Keynote Speaker

Friday, September 21 at 7 PM; University Center Ballroom (Registration opens at 6:15)

Courtney White, Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition, will present the 23rd Headwaters Conference keynote address at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21

A former archaeologist and Sierra Club activist, Courtney voluntarily dropped out of the `conflict industry in 1997 to co-found The Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building bridges between ranchers, conservationists, public land managers, scientists and others.

In 2006, The Quivira Coalition ventured into the ranching business when 149 heifers were deliver to its Valle Grande Ranch, located on the Santa Fe National Forest. Courtney likes to say The Quivira Coalition is now a "conservation organization that runs livestock for land health and profit."

His writing has been published in numerous magazines. His essay "The Working Wilderness: a Call for a Land Health Movement" was recently published in Wendell Berry's collection of essays entitled "The Way of Ignorance." His book Revolution on the Range: The Rise of the New Ranch in the American West was published by Island Press in 2008.  

Courtney lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his family and a backyard full of chickens.