Ken Rait directs Pew’s work to conserve western lands, working with local partners and the Bureau of Land Management to balance conservation and development.
Before joining Pew, Rait worked at the Campaign for America’s Wilderness, ran the Heritage Forests Campaign that protected 60 million acres of roadless national forest lands, was conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, and spent seven years as issues director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance overseeing the campaign that resulted in the creation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and conservation chair of the Sierra Club Rincon Group in Tucson, Arizona, where he lobbied for passage of the Arizona Bureau of Land Management wilderness bill. He also held a faculty position with the University of Arizona’s department of agricultural economics as a research associate.
Rait holds a bachelor’s degree in physical geography and a master’s in environmental affairs and water resource management, both from Clark University.