Moving science to action — creating conservation and climate solutions that deliver lasting value for nature & people.

Before NRDC could build a beef sustainability standard, we spent a year synthesizing the sustainable ranching literature into an annotated bibliography evidence base, then codified findings into criteria, best practices, and outcome metrics — the direct precursor to the Grasslands Alliance Standard. We’ve applied the same diligence for the Embers Foundation, Audubon Conservation Ranching, Earthjustice, and BurnBot, among other clients.

We apply leading adaptive management frameworks (e.g., Conservation Measures Partnership) and trusted metrics systems (e.g., those used by Point Blue Conservation Science’s Rangeland Monitoring Network and the National Resources Inventory). That closes the loop: evidence that improves management, then supports the compelling multimedia storytelling that inspires funding, support, and replication. For Audubon, that meant recommending an M&E framework alongside the communications plan — not after it.

We’ve convened NGOs with genuinely competing theories of change — TNC, WWF, EDF, Audubon, Defenders, Ducks Unlimited, and the Savory Institute among them — to align on a shared vision for sustainable beef production. We’ve done the same at the technical level, collaborating with UC Davis and Cornell scientists to convene 40+ scientists, ranchers, and NGO leaders around a single draft standard.

We apply a systems-based approach to diagnose which “cogs” in the machinery of success are working and which need capacity-building investment. For Audubon, that meant surveying national and regional leaders and partners to surface valuable lessons learned during the program’s initial rollout. We identified priority challenges and the solutions interviewees found most promising, then applied those findings to recommend strategic improvements in program design and service offerings.

We design management strategies to generate their full suite of potential benefits and avoid risks of unintended consequences. Our report for BurnBot illustrated how to time precision burning treatments to match science-based protocols for controlling priority invasive weeds — and favor natives — thus generating valuable benefits including and beyond fuels reduction.

We authored a 100+ study synthesis distinguishing scientific consensus from contested claims on the climate, biodiversity, water, economic, and social benefits of regenerative grazing — helping NRDC establish an evidence-based, nuanced position on this controversial topic.

For the Conservation XPrize Fire Grand Challenge, we scored proposals on their merits — including their funding recommendation — while Conservation X Labs made the final call. At the Embers Foundation, we conducted due diligence on proposals and delivered recommendations directly to the President and Executive Director.

We flagged the U.S. beef-sustainability funding gap publicly in 2018, and in 2011 named the lack of an FSC-equivalent certification for grasslands and ranching — then spent the next decade building it as the Grasslands Alliance Standard and helping Audubon Conservation Ranching scale their approach.

Finally, we (5) surveyed stakeholders to identify key barriers to success and ideas of solutions to each, applying results to strengthen implementation. Those are the steps in our Five Key Questions Methodology, created while advancing sustainability for a mattress manufacturer and later applied across beef supply chains.

We’ve applied that discipline for clients like Spaldin and HSBC — and diagnosed its absence publicly, using UL’s Seven Sins of Greenwashing to show how vague beef-marketing claims risk real FTC legal exposure.

We co-authored a peer-reviewed synthesis of ranch-level sustainability indicators (Rangeland Ecology & Management, 2021) as Grasslands Alliance’s representative — invited because those indicators were already shaping industry standards.