Thank You for a Successful 2019
Happy end of the year and end of the decade! What a year. The relaunch of ConservAmerica has been a great success thanks to your support. The end of the year is always a busy time, but we wanted to take a moment and let you know about some of the highlights from the past 12 months.
Probably the biggest news of the year was the launch of the Roosevelt Conservation Caucus. We were proud to support Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Brian Mast of Florida in their efforts to set up the bicameral Republican caucus and recruit members. The caucus continues to attract conservative members of Congress who support proactive, constructive efforts to meet our environmental challenges and conservation goals, including making sure our public places are well cared for and remain open for everyone to enjoy.
Along with our sister organization, the Roosevelt Conservation Foundation (RCF), we hosted a number of lunch briefings for congressional staff during the past year on the various legislative priorities of caucus members. Those priorities range from protecting at-risk species on private working lands to addressing the maintenance backlog at our national parks, cleaning up abandoned mines, and promoting advanced energy solutions to reduce emissions. Our last briefing of the year focused on market-oriented land management strategies in the agriculture and forestry sectors to meet conservation and environmental challenges.
We’re looking forward to the new year and a whole new crop of legislative briefings. Be sure to check in with us regularly to find out what RCC members are doing to promote commonsense solutions to our conservation priorities and environmental challenges.
We also added some new faces to our leadership team. We’re still small and scrappy, but punching above our weight and committed to growing in order to better serve our mission of promoting conservative values and protecting clean air and clean water. Jeff Kupfer, a former chief of staff and acting deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy, took over as president of ConservAmerica when former president, Rob Sisson, was confirmed by the Senate to the International Joint Commission. Brent Fewell, Robert Dillon, and Todd Johnston round out the team. We also brought on some new executive board members and we created an advisory board of experts from across the country.
One of our favorite nights of the past year was our annual gala and awards dinner on November 15. We were honored to present our Congressional Champion Award to Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Cory Gardner of Colorado for their continued commitment to conservation. We were overwhelmed with the response to the dinner and owe a great debt of gratitude to all who came out and made the night a smashing success. Thank you.
We launched a new website and updated our policy goals. An organization’s website is its calling card, and we decided ours needed an update. We’re not done (websites are never truly finished) but we hope you like our new calling card. We’ve done our best to lay out what we believe and why we believe it. We saw a need for a place for people who love the outdoors and want to make sure future generations have the same chance to enjoy it as they do, but who may not think of themselves as environmentalists — if you’re like us, taking care of what you’ve got is just common sense.
Our overarching goal as an organization is to help build common ground between policymakers and stakeholders around policies that protect the environment and economic growth. Our priorities are environmental stewardship, conservation, improving access to public lands, and supporting policies to make the energy we depend on cleaner, reliable, and affordable. When we’re not on Capitol Hill, we’re out hunting, fishing, hiking, skiing, bird watching, playing — enjoying this Great Land. We want to make sure our children and grandchildren have the same opportunities, and that’s why we are ConservAmerica. We hope you join us.