Are you passionate about sustainability and the natural environment? Do you care about bringing natural areas back into our cities and suburbs? Do you think that the private sector has an important role to play in restoring urban environments that respond to climate change, reverse species loss, and improve health outcomes?
If your answer is yes, then we invite you to apply to join UER’s Board of Directors. You can self-nominate or nominate someone else whom you know fits the bill. We are looking for people with a passion for our mission and expertise that can strengthen our young organization.
Our board needs people who are excited about building this emerging nonprofit into a strong and established institution. We are particularly interested in identifying leaders with:
- subject matter expertise (in green infrastructure, native ecosystems, environmental economics, etc); and/or
- people with organization-building skills, like marketing, communications, graphic design, grant writing, fundraising, accounting, and crafting business strategies for start-ups.
And we are looking for people from a range of backgrounds and with diverse life experiences. UER currently focuses on the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region (including Maryland and Virginia suburbs), and welcomes people with connections or ties to this area.
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UER is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit urban land trust that was established in August 2014 to work with landowners and communities to preserve or develop value-enhancing green spaces that serve multiple, integrated ecosystem functions — spaces we call Eco-Functioning Spaces — forthe sake of our region’s environment and the earth systems that enable us to survive and thrive. Eco-Functioning Spaces are green spaces designed to address numerous environmental challenges while adding social and economic value to surrounding on-site or nearby urban areas. Eco-Functioning Spaces may be existing, undisturbed natural areas (i.e. forests, forest patches, meadows, etc.), or they may be restored or newly constructed natural areas located on previously built, impervious, or environmentally-degraded land parcels (i.e. through reforestation, vegetated green infrastructure, constructed wetlands, bioswales and rain gardens, restored meadows, and the like).
UER provides value by creating, protecting, aggregating, and engaging people with these special spaces. We are dedicated to finding mutually beneficial ways of working with landowner-partners to place or preserve Eco-Functioning Spaces (EFS) on their lands and then protecting and enhancing those EFS (and their functions) over time. Where there are opportunities to expand Eco-Functioning Spaces (EFS), or aggregate them with other EFS, in order to increase the scale of the ecosystem services they can offer, UER will pursue them.
UER’s mission is to support the development of Eco-Functioning Spaces, design them to enhance value, protect them over time, engage site users and local communities in their care and appreciation, and ultimately, connect them into protected greenways that promote regional environmental and public health benefits.
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Please look around our website, or visit our LinkedIn and Facebook pages for more information about UER.
To apply, please send a short statement of interest and resume or LinkedIn profile to Rachel Toker at rachel@urbanecosystemrestorations.org. We look forward to hearing from you.
