Just Conservation Solutions
"What are the conditions that allow a system to function the way it was meant to?"
Just Conservation Solutions exists at the intersection of ecological design, community stewardship, and the research and advocacy that connect the two. We work on the ground, in the community, and in the policy conversation — because all three are required.
A well-designed habitat patch is not enough. A well-intentioned policy is not enough. What makes conservation work is the connective tissue — the people, the practice, and the knowledge that bind the two together.
Heather Davis Miller · Founder & Executive Director
Just Conservation Solutions is an environmental design and conservation practice based in Vermont, working at the intersection of landscape ecology, community stewardship, and applied research. We design habitats, build ecological literacy, develop young conservationists, and publish the research and policy work that connects on-the-ground practice to the larger conservation conversation.
The three program areas below are distinct in their methods but unified in their purpose: to understand and create the conditions that allow ecological and community systems to function — at the property scale, the landscape scale, and the policy scale.
This work does not separate the science from the people, or the people from the politics. It asks what it would take to get all three working together.
Every project is grounded in landscape ecology and regional conservation priorities — connecting what happens on a single property to the larger systems that make species persistence possible.
Conservation that doesn't include the people living on and near the land is conservation that won't last. Stewardship builds voice, and voice shapes policy — that cycle is the work.
We study what we do. Applied research connects practice to knowledge and knowledge to advocacy — making each project part of a larger body of evidence.
The next generation of conservationists doesn't need to be recruited — they need to be met in the places they already love, with the knowledge and skills to protect them.
The work of Just Conservation Solutions unfolds across three program areas, each addressing a different dimension of the same challenge: how do we create the conditions for ecological and community systems to thrive?
Site-specific ecological design for private landowners and conservation partners. Translating state and regional conservation priorities into habitat connectivity, riparian restoration, and landscape-scale ecological function — one property at a time.
Explore GradientsExperiential conservation education for young people — in schools, in the field, and in the community. Building the ecological literacy, connection to place, and conservation voice that students carry into adulthood and into advocacy.
Explore Youth StewardshipWhere the work becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes advocacy. Applied research on landscape ecology and habitat function, policy briefs that connect practice to conservation frameworks, and community organizing that gives landowners and communities a voice in the decisions that shape their landscapes.
Explore The LabHeather Davis Miller is an environmental designer and conservation practitioner with expertise spanning ecosystem design, habitat connectivity, landscape ecology, applied research, and community-based education and advocacy. She holds a Master of Science in Environmental Policy from Bard College and a Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
Before founding Just Conservation Solutions, Heather spent more than a decade in national conservation leadership — at the National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, and Community Health Councils — working at the intersection of organizational strategy, partnership development, and conservation policy. That work convinced her that the most important gap in conservation is not between ambition and funding, but between practice and policy, and between science and community.
Just Conservation Solutions is the answer to that gap: a practice grounded in ecological design, animated by community, and accountable to the research and policy conversation that determines what conservation looks like at scale.
"I kept seeing the same pattern: conservation goals that no one had a plan to achieve, landscapes that were well-documented but not well-connected, and communities with real conservation potential and no way to act on it. Just Conservation Solutions exists to work in that space."
Heather Davis Miller · Founder & Executive DirectorWhether you're a landowner, an educator, a researcher, or a policy partner — the best starting point is a conversation about what you're working on and what you're trying to build.
Get in TouchHeather Davis Miller · Founder & Executive Director
heather@justconservationsolutions.com · Vermont