Jim States Elected to Board

by Nancy Debevoise

During its June meeting, WOC's board of directors elected environmental scientist Dr. Jim States as its newest member.

A Wyoming native, Jim and his wife Carol live on the banks of the North Platte River in the Saratoga Valley, not far from board president Joyce Evans' ranch. Jim is a longtime conservation activist, promoting access to public lands, opposing ill-advised land exchanges and fighting pollution of blue-ribbon trout streams.

After graduating cum laude from the University of Wyoming with a Bachelor's degree in secondary education and biology, Jim earned his Master's in plant ecology at U.W. and his Doctorate in animal behavior and ecology at Oregon State University.

Jim has had a long and distinguished career as an environmental scientist and conservation biologist for private companies and public agencies. In the late 1970s, he "wrote the book" on environmental studies to provide a baseline against which scientists could monitor and identify the environmental impacts of energy development. During the 1980s, he was a senior scientist for the Battelle Memorial Institute's Pacific Northwest Laboratory, where he directed a research program for the U.S. Department of Energy investigating the ecological impacts of coal synfuels. He also led the Environmental Protection Agency's Cold Climate Environmental Research Program, solving environmental problems unique to cold climates. In the 1990s he served as an environmental consultant to the Department of Energy.

Jim recently left environmental consulting, partly, he says, "because I was tired of providing expertise in support of people who only wanted to know the minimum they could 'get by with' in addressing environmental concerns while proceeding with their projects."

Instead, he says, "I prefer to support achieving the maximum protection and preservation of our natural resources. Serving on WOC's board gives me a unique opportunity to bring the insights and perspectives of one who has worked directly with and for development companies and resource management agencies and therefore knows very well their vulnerabilities."