Jonathan Hayes

Executive Director

Jon has strong conservation expertise through his professional experience at multiple levels in public service. Over the last decade, Jon has built strong partnerships between public and private organizations to provide scalable conservation outcomes across multiple types of ecosystems. He has specifically focused on meaningful programs that conserve native bird species and the habitats they rely on.

Jon served with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative where he was responsible for guiding multi-organizational development and implementation of applied research projects. In this capacity, he coordinated landscape-level cooperative projects in a six-state region amongst federal agencies, state wildlife agencies, and multiple non-profit organizations focused on improving conservation effectiveness in western grassland and riparian ecosystems. Additionally, he has served with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture (OPJV), working at a programmatic level to implement regional conservation efforts aimed at restoring declining grassland bird populations. Among his achievements in this role was the development of the OPJV Grassland Restoration Incentive Program, which was responsible for the improvement of grassland habitat quality on over 60,000 acres of private working lands in Texas.

Jon holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Population and Organismic Biology from the University of Colorado and a Master’s of Science in Natural Resource Conservation from the University of Montana.