Conrad Reining

At Wildlands Network: Conrad Reining is responsible for the Eastern Program, which extends from the boreal reaches of Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula through the Appalachian Mountains to the Everglades of Florida. He is responsible for coordinating conservation planning, outreach and fundraising for this vast and diverse area, the Eastern Wildway, with the ultimate goal of developing a vision of linked conservation areas stretching along its full length.

  Since joining the Wildlands Network in 2001, a major focus of his work has been the development of a trans-border proposal for a network of conservation areas, a Wildlands Network Design, in the Northern Appalachians of southeastern Canada and northeastern US. He is a founding board member of the Two Countries, One Forest (www.2C1Forest.org) initiative which pursues a comprehensive bi-national conservation strategy for the Northern Appalachians.  He also is collaborating on efforts to advance conservation in high priority linkage areas of the region, including the northern Green Mountains of Vermont and Québec.  Conrad holds a Masters Degree from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences and a BA from UC Berkeley.  

Off the Clock: Conrad spends as much time as he can with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs. With them he tends to perennial and vegetable gardens that have expanded beyond reasonable limits.  He and his family embrace Vermont’s six months of winter by skiing, snowshoeing, ice skating and running with studded shoes and layers of technical clothing.

Background: From 1991 to 1997, Conrad was the Washington, DC-based Director of Conservation International’s (CI) Guatemala Program.  In that position he co-directed the design and implementation of CI’s conservation project, ProPetén, in Guatemala’s northern lowland region. Conrad also helped launch CI’s Monitoring and Evaluation Group.