Ken Rait

Profile

Ken Rait began directing Pew’s western lands initiative in September 2011.  For 10 years prior, he headed up the campaigns team of the Campaign for America’s Wilderness, which became part of The Pew Charitable Trusts in 2010.  

Rait is also the former director of the Heritage Forests Campaign, an initiative that successfully advocated for the conservation of nearly 60 million acres of roadless, wild national forestlands.  

Before joining Pew, Rait was conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council and spent seven years as issues director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Previously, he was the conservation chair of the Sierra Club's Rincon Group in Tucson, 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. His work has been published in various legal and economics journals.

Rait holds a bachelor’s degree in physical geography and a master's degree in environmental affairs and water resource management, both from Clark University.