Spotlight on Marshall Johnson

BY CARA SCHAEFER

Can the decisions we make everyday save the prairie? We spoke with Marshall Johnson, acting Chief Conservation Officer for the National Audubon Society, about birds, learning to love grasslands, and empowering shoppers to make eco-friendly choices.

Photo courtesy of Marshall Johnson.

OUT THERE: What's one of your favorite birds and why?

MARSHALL JOHNSON: One of my favorite birds is the Western Meadowlark. I think of birds as sort of my playlists in nature — the troubadours and songstresses that fill my time in nature with sound and song. For me, I spend the most time in nature in the prairies, and that’s the ubiquitous call: the call of the Western Meadowlark. 

OT: What got you interested in birds in the first place?

MJ: I didn't really grow up as someone who was keenly aware of nature. I grew up on the blacktop — Dallas, Los Angeles. What initially got me into birds, and the environment more generally, was at some point I picked up a Hudson River School of artists book. Something about landscape art, particularly the variety that came out of that fraternity of artists, spoke to me and really attracted me to nature. I appreciated that within many of these works nature was big, and people were small — but still a part of the system. 

A group of us at the University of Minnesota Crookston, where I studied business, became really motivated and activated by environmental causes. I felt like it was something I wanted to explore more deeply, and so I moved to Fargo and started a part-time gig with the Audubon Society. I thought it would be a six-month exploration, and that was 13 years ago.

OT: What does the Audubon Society mean to you personally?

MJ: For me, the Audubon Society are the spokespeople — the ambassadors, if you will, of North America's birds. We like to say that the Audubon Society is local everywhere. And that’s true. We have 450 community chapters throughout North America (mostly in the United States), 20 state and regional offices, and 44 nature centers, many of which are located in urban areas. When you look at the 1.9 million members, and the 3 or 4 million people we connect with, it's increasingly diverse and increasingly inclusive. That's important to me, and we've got a long way to go. 

OT: Why do you think you have an affinity with grassland environments in particular?

MJ: I’m going to borrow a quote that I love: “Anyone can love the mountains, but it takes soul to love the prairie.” I grew up in a very tumultuous household as a kid, and there’s always been a calming aspect to the prairie. I felt most at peace in Western Texas, and everything that was around me then, as we were driving through or spending time there, were prairies and cows and grassland birds. It became ingrained in my DNA and my spirit.

OT: Can you tell me a bit about the Conservation Ranching Initiative?

MJ: Ninety plus percent of what remains of the historic grassland ecosystem — which once covered a vast amount of North America and has since been converted, urbanized, you name it  —  is either owned or managed by cattle ranchers. And so a group of us “rebels” within the Audubon Society, we began to think about what real, scalable conservation might look like. A lot of the tools that the grassland conservation and environmental community have been utilizing have been the same over the last 100 years: easements, acquisitions, other cost share programs. And they're very important, but when you look at the amount of loss that we're experiencing, juxtaposed to the amount conserved, there's a chasm that's emerged. 

So with that in mind, we felt that one of the most important things that we could do was raise the level and set a standard for grassland management which underscored the need to reduce chemical use, the need for regenerative, holistic range management, and the need for cattle production systems that corresponded to and blended with grassland birds and pollinators likes bees and butterflies — with what those critters need out on the landscape. We ultimately decided to create a habitat certification, the first of its kind for grass-fed beef, to empower everyday people. 

Empowering consumers with better choices is one of the most important things that we can do to address a whole range of environmental challenges, from climate change to biodiversity collapse. Every day people are making decisions, and if we can change those supply chains to be more beneficial for nature, it's incredibly powerful. Since we've launched the Conservation Ranching Initiative, on average, the ranchers that are enrolled have increased their bird abundance by nearly a third. When we can get the grasslands that we have remaining to work more, and do more for birds and wildlife, it's a win-win situation.

OT: Do you think we as people can create a better environmental future for both birds and ourselves?

MJ: I think we have to, and I am hopeful. But as the recent IPCC Environmental Report indicates, we've run out of time. We are going to have a changing climate. And I think that's another reason why bringing environmental stewardship and conservation into everyday homes through consumerism is an important part of what we need to do. Yes, we need our governments to act boldly. Yes, we need to have corporations and businesses change their approach and their corporate behaviors. But we also need to do that as individuals. And I think that's where programs like the Conservation Ranching Program have a vital role to play.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You can watch Marshall’s TED Talk online. For the 2021 IPCC Environmental Report click here.