Alex Littlejohn grew up in Oxford doing all things hunting, fishing and more outside. He had the unique experience of being from Oxford but going into Bulldog territory for college at Mississippi State and said they couldn’t be more different but couldn’t love both towns for what they are any more. He got a degree in wildlife and forestry management and went on to grad school earning a master’s degree in wetland ecology and water quality. He gained hands-on experience working as an intern for the Corps of Engineers, which helped him figure out what he wanted to do. Right out of grad school, he began working for the Nature Conservancy in Mississippi. He started as the Freshwater Program Director and moved up to the Associate State Director before his current position as State Director. He is going on 11 years with the Nature Conservancy and has recently received the Presidential Appointment to the North American Wetlands Conservation Council (NAWCA) and the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act Advisory Group.
Have you always been interested in wildlife?
I was just telling somebody that, as a kid, my dad would go off on the weekends to go deer and duck hunting with his friends and it was simply a matter of getting tired of being left at the house. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven and finally just snuck into my dad’s jeep. I wanted to see something different than hunting at the house. I curled up with the chocolate lab in the backseat for about 30 minutes headed down the road and then I surprised him. The rest is history. I got to go ever since. I have slept on the floor of many duck blinds and boats. The sight of a mallard drake head coming through the cypress of the delta is what hooked me as a kid. It continues to hook me today and what has driven me. It is funny what little things and memories and experiences as a child will do when you are looking back on where you are in your life at certain points. That did it for me. We were always interested in wildlife.
When did you start to think about making a career out of it?
I went to Lafayette County High School and they did a great job of putting on career fairs for juniors and seniors, and it got my wheels turning. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to hone in on as far as natural resources. I wanted to do something outside and I just started looking around and doing a little research. It was actually a former teacher of mine that was at the career fair and working for the Corps. That teacher was Pam Sanders, and she told me I really ought to consider their internship program. That just stuck with me and I saw her again my senior year. I eventually got signed up for their internship. Once I was in, I had mentors out the gate, and I knew what I wanted to do from then on. I saw what they did and what their routines looked like and what their jobs looked like. I fell comfortably into it.
What are the goals of the Nature Conservancy in Mississippi?
Our mission is to conserve the land and waters on which all life begins and we take a really unique approach to our work. Our work is very much land-based. What I mean by that is a lot of people don’t know this, but we are one of the largest private landowners in the U.S. We own outright or have an easement on almost six million acres across the U.S. We might be introducing bison to tall grass prairies of Oklahoma or we might be working with fishermen in Louisiana or the oystermen off the coast of Mississippi. It is just a broad spectrum of landscapes that we are actively manning. When we approach our mission, we are approaching it from 75 years of experiences of land management and we are speaking from those experiences and aren’t driven by a theory or theoretical approach. We are driven by actionable on the ground, tangible experiences. If we are supporting a policy in D.C., we feel it is going to yield conservation benefits. If a senator calls from the Dakotas to ask why we are supporting something, we can point to our experiences in the Dakotas as a landowner saying what it will do to the properties and surrounding landowners in that region. If we are talking about farms, we are able to interact with farmers and we do farm properties across the U.S. To me, our mission and our approach to our mission just gets a level of credibility because we are landowners and we have skin in the game.
How did it feel to be appointed to the North American Wetlands Conservation Council (NAWCA) and the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act Advisory Group?
I consider it a great honor to be appointed by Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland to the Wetland Council as well as the Migratory Bird Advisory Group. To me as a kid from North Mississippi, thinking back to those days when I was barely able to see over the top of the duck blind watching the show take place before sunrise to now being a part of a very prestigious group on the council and just incredible peers there with a wealth of knowledge and expertise and just to be able to join in and participate both from representing my neck of the woods in the deep south but also to see what others are doing out there and have an impact across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. It is a pretty wide area. I’m just excited to participate in the work and excited to participate with those peers and excited to interact and learn from them. It is one of the greatest pieces of legislation that produced this council and the funding for it. It is one of the greatest conservation success stories out there, and I’m just honored to be a part of it.
What does your job look like in these new roles?
The council initiates two grant cycles a year. There’s a small grant and a large grant. The large grant is your up to $1 million applications, and the small grant is up to about $100,000 applications. With the council and the council staff, they evaluate each proposal and application. They evaluate the impact they would have. They rank them based on what they aim to do. As long as it is aligned with the council’s approach to wetland conservation and protection, then the staff will send it up to the council with their recommendations and the council evaluates those and makes their decision. The council weighs in and votes and participates in that process. They send it up for funding to congress. Those are approved through congress to be funded. Once that process is done, that money is distributed out across Canada, the US and Mexico. It is going right to the ground from there, so it is a very streamlined and effective process. That is the goal of the council.
Do you think it will be difficult at times to balance the council with your State Director position or will they work together?
I would say that this particular role, given the work that we do in Mississippi and the work we do with our colleagues, is just going to fall right in line with the day to day and annual work we do. It is going to require some travel and participation that I wouldn’t otherwise have to do, but it falls right in line with the trajectory with what we do and why we are here. It is a little more natural of a fit with us.
How will your involvement with these groups further your knowledge to help Mississippi?
Mississippi has been granted roughly just over $13 million directly from NAWCA. We have also received an additional almost $14 million in what they call “multi-state projects” where the work is going on in both Arkansas and Mississippi. So, we have benefited from large amounts of money coming to our wetlands and private lands, and they have had an impact of over a quarter of a million acres. That is a large footprint. I think being a representative of the work down here, I can speak to the impact that it will continue to have. I have to believe we will continue to see that level of impact and, if anything, I can validate that the dollar here can go so much further than you see elsewhere in terms of acreage impacted and wetland habitat enhancement. I can really speak to the culture of our private landowners and what it means to them to see these investments come down here. There is an impact both for the wildlife but also almost equal economic and recreational benefits to the public hunters and private landowners that are interested in conservation and wetland enhancement on their properties.
For more information on the Nature Conservancy at Mississippi, visit https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/mississippi/.
