Imagine a conservation portfolio the size of 180 Stanley Parks, and then imagine being the person tasked with growing it. The Nature Trust of British Columbia is at a critical crossroads, moving from government-heavy funding to a future driven by private philanthropic vision. To lead this evolution, they are searching for a Director of Development, Marketing, and Communications, a role designed for a leader who wants to deliver results that can be seen, felt, and protected for generations.
Join CEO Dr. Jasper Lament as he discusses the urgency of the biodiversity crisis and the “conservation toolbox” that makes the Trust unique. From the Salish Sea to the Kootenays, discover how this organization is using data-driven science to pick the “best of the best” lands and why they need a sophisticated communicator to bridge the gap between ecological need and donor passion.
Ready to leave a legacy that truly lasts forever? Tune in for an inside look at this rare leadership opening, hosted by Christoph Clodius of The Discovery Group, and find out if you have the vision to help protect the nature of BC before it’s too late.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Nature Trust Of British Columbia With Dr. Jasper Lament, CEO
In this episode, we’re going to be speaking about the Director of Development, Marketing and Communications role at the Nature Trust of British Columbia, an exciting opportunity for someone to make a career path in a really compelling, interesting and vibrant organization. I’m delighted to be joined by Dr. Jasper Lament, who is the CEO of the Nature Trust. Welcome, Jasper.
Thanks very much, Christoph. It’s exciting to be here with you and to talk about a really pivotal role on our team and we’re excited to work with The Discovery Group to find an outstanding person to join our team.
Let’s dive right in there, Jasper. For somebody that’s reading that may not know too much about the Nature Trust of BC or think they know something about it for that matter, tell me a bit more about the organization. What does it do? What does it stand for? Tell me a bit more about it.
The Best-Kept Secret In Conservation
The Nature Trust of BC is a conservation organization which works only in BC to protect, restore, and care for ecologically important lands across our amazing province. We’ve been doing this exciting work since 1971. We’ve got a talented staff of about 40 individuals that have specialized skills that help us do all of those important things of buying, restoring, and caring for the land. Over that 55-year history now, we have secured 180,000 acres of land.
That’s similar in size to about 180 Stanley Parks. We care for that land and ensure that it’s protected forever and we’re constantly looking out for new opportunities to protect important areas across our province, protect biodiversity, fight climate change, and make a difference for the people of British Columbia.
That’s amazing in terms of that scale. I’m glad you put it in something I could understand, Jasper. We were talking off-mic a little bit about the sense of scale, the sense of scope, 180 Stanley Parks that scope is really impressive and amazing, frankly. When you talk about protection forever, maybe let’s we can dive a little bit about that. Tell me about the kinds of criteria you have. What kind of lands do you look for, are most important to you that you really think about the protection, preservation, and restoration space? What appeals to you as an organization, what do you see as the needs there?
A Science-Grounded Mission
The Nature Trust of BC, from the very beginning, has been an organization grounded in science. We’ve always had scientists on our board. Our board has always been a mix of business leaders, scientists, and fundraisers. That helps us to ensure that we make sound business decisions and sound decisions grounded in science about which lands that we want to add to our conservation portfolio and which opportunities we are going to let pass us by.
There’s always hundreds more potential land acquisitions than there’s funding capacity to protect. We have the luxury, really, of picking the best of the best lands to add to our conservation portfolio. We use science, some pretty cool conservation science tools, to help us identify which areas have the most ecological value, which ones rank highest relative to our existing conservation lands portfolio so that we can make decisions about which areas would make the most difference and bring the most ecological value into our program.
Nature Trust: We have the luxury, really, of picking the best of the best lands to add to our conservation portfolio.
That science database has really come through both on the ecological work and the fundraising work for that matter that we’re going to pivot to in a few minutes here. Jasper, your background is in science. You’ve been with Nature Trust for over a decade now, I think, for that matter. What keeps you at Nature Trust? What do you like most about having been there? Any particular things you’re proud of or highlights that you really want to flag in your tenure as CEO?
A Career Rooted In Passion
Christoph, I was born and raised here in BC and grew up outside and have always been fascinated by the natural wonders of our province. I come by it, honestly, from that perspective. I was chasing frogs and snakes and bringing them home in paper bags to show my mom and that’s just what I did. I was wading around in the creeks trying to catch baby salmon and bring them home and put them in a fish tank, that kind of thing.
I have always been fascinated by nature. Prior to coming to the Nature Trust of BC, I worked for other conservation organizations and always found land conservation very appealing. The idea of buying land and protecting it forever has just been a really tangible way to deliver conservation impact. I did my phd in Biology and during that time, was able to indulge my passion for fish, for nature, and for wildlife.
At the same time, I realized that where I could make the most impact and where I had the most passion was to work directly in conservation rather than in research. After finishing my phd, my first job out of grad school was in conservation and spent most of my career there ever since. Within the broader field of conservation, land trusts like the Nature Trust of BC have a really amazing and appealing conservation toolbox, which I think is underutilized here in Canada compared to the US.
It has just so much to offer in terms of protecting the natural assets of our country and it’s something that I get really excited and passionate about because I can see the results. I can feel the results. Visiting one of the conservation areas, there are over 500 of them that the Nature Trust of BC has established every year. We’re protecting a bunch more and you go in those places and you can see the difference that conservation can make.
You can see how incredibly important it is for wildlife and it’s just really rewarding. For much of our history, I think we were a secret. The best-kept secret in conservation. I think it’s time for that secret to be shared more broadly. This position, I think, will have a great opportunity to really raise and elevate the profile of land conservation in BC. The Nature Trust of BC can really deliver impact for donors, for communities, and for wildlife, for biodiversity and to give people a really tangible way to fight climate change, to slow down the loss of biodiversity, and to deliver results that you can see and feel and walk on.
The Nature Trust of BC can really deliver impact for donors, for communities, and for wildlife. Share on XHere in BC, it goes without saying we have such a history of caring for the planet, caring for the environment, or at least I’d like to think so. The work that the Nature Trust is doing in that space is as you say using some underutilized tools to really do so much good or developing its own tools and using these tools that should be and can be used much more prevalently and functioning below the radar in some cases, which is where this director comes in fundamentally. Tell me a little bit more about the director role as you see it.
What are the key priorities for this person, what’s on the horizon, what would you like to see them accomplish in the first months, years even perhaps, when you think about somebody coming on to manage those two very complementary areas of marketing, the communications aspect that public-facing piece, and then of course donor engagement and community building there fundamentally.
This director position reports directly to the CEO and is a member of our senior management team. The position obviously has a critical role overseeing development, marketing, and communications functions within our organization and then working directly with the conservation leaders and the finance leader on our management team. They will also be coming in and inheriting a really great team with some amazing potential to move forward. That’s pretty exciting, I think, and would be very appealing for someone. The other thing that’s going on is we’re getting ready to launch a new website and some new advertising, some new marketing initiatives, some new things to see. That work is underway.
I was wondering if you were going to bring up the rebrand or whether that was a secret for that matter, but that’s a key piece for that this person’s getting into as well. One thing I want to come back to is a little bit on the fundraising side, the development side. I think that’s fundamentally a priority for this person. As we know, government funding priorities are shifting, and philanthropic priorities are shifting.
This person really has the advantage and the opportunity to take this long history this organization that’s been credible in doing incredible work since 1971, I think you said. Now really building on that, that new rebrand, and really creating a larger community of donors to do more of this incredible work when it’s so needed in the here and now. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about the fundraising piece specifically, and I know you’ve got a very active board, you mentioned some of your board members are fundraisers in their own right too. If you want to talk a little bit more about the fundraising aspect, that might help for people reading.
Navigating A Shifting Funding Landscape
The Nature Trust of BC was launched by the federal government back in 1971 and since then, we’ve always had a close working relationship with both the federal government, provincial government, and other levels of government too. Conservation is really delivered through both public and private fundraising. The fundraising team is responsible for raising the funds that our conservation team needs to top up the public funds that drive our land acquisition work, that drive our restoration work.
That public funding landscape, as you mentioned, is shifting dramatically. The federal government invested wisely and heavily in protecting Canada’s nature over the last five years or so. That is changing. For us to continue our work, we’re going to have to accelerate our private fundraising to make up for the drop-off in public fundraising.
We’re likely also going to have to do less projects because there just isn’t the same level of government match funding available. We’re in the midst of a pivot to reflect the changing funding landscape. There’s also a lot of opportunity. We have a group of really committed, generous donors who’ve helped us achieve the level of success that we’ve had. We’re talking to them frankly about the changes in the funding landscape and talking to them about how we can continue to work together to continue to deliver impact without the same level of government investment.
Nature Trust: We’re in the midst of a pivot to reflect the changing funding landscape.
You’ve got some tremendously loyal donors who are going to stick with you, some new opportunities, and what’s interesting about your work as well is that in some cases, it is so geographically specific, you can draw in different geographical pockets, if you will, for very specific initiatives at very specific times and build some long-term relationships with those donors too, so there’s lots of different ways of approaching the work.
Our work is focused on areas of BC that have the highest biodiversity. If someone were to look at a map of the conservation areas that the Nature Trust of BC has established, they’re highly concentrated in places like the Salish Sea, the South Okanagan, and the East Kootenay, and the Rocky Mountain Trench. Those are places where we’ve been working for decades, where we are constantly looking for new opportunities, constantly delivering impactful new projects.
Building support in those regions where we are well known for the work that we’re doing and where people want to see us continue to deliver conservation impact is one of the key opportunities for this person. I think that there’s a lot of potential there. Some of our campaigns for individual projects bring out hundreds of individuals and families to support a project. People might be supporting a project with $50, $500,000, or more. Building that base of project supporters in the key regions where we work is a huge opportunity and something that we are already working hard on. The new director will have the opportunity to put their own stamp on that and deliver new results that way.
It also speaks to the breadth of ways that people can get involved in the organization, fundamentally as well. What do you think we’re looking for in the new director? If you were to review CVs, if you were to sit down with people, what are the traits, the background, the personality that you think would align best with the needs and the opportunity and the challenges in some cases too?
The Director Role: Leadership And Legacy
We need a strong leader, someone a great communicator, someone who has the ability to communicate clearly and effectively both with their team and with the CEO and with the board. Deliver messages that are needed, whether that’s to inspire the team. We have a passionate team already. That’s not always the need, but sometimes, we need to deliver harder messages like, “No, we don’t have the capacity to take on that project as well as this one.”
There’s definitely a need for strong communications, for the ability to continue to steward the incredible donors that we already have. Most thought leaders in the fundraising space will agree that keeping the donors that you have is a lot easier than going out and finding new ones. We can always do a better job of stewarding our donors. I think that will be important, as someone who has a commitment.
We’ve always tried to take a personal approach to stewarding our donors and we’re lucky that some of the families that have supported us here in BC are now in their second and third generations of supporting the Nature Trust of BC. That is just so amazing and something we want to continue. A commitment to donor stewardship and the ability to innovate and try new things in a fundraising environment, which is evolving and changing.
It’s time for everybody to consider that nature and the environment is an equally important part of philanthropy. Share on XThere are a lot of organizations that are out there looking to fundraise for important causes, whether it’s social, cultural, health or environment, so it’s a crowded space. We have to identify and deliver messages effectively that will help to make sure that the environment in general but land conservation in particular, is a key component of people’s philanthropic portfolios.
People are going to continue to invest in healthcare and education, but it’s time for everybody to consider that nature and the environment is an equally important part of philanthropy and get more people involved on the ground and in supporting the critical work that we’re doing at the Nature Trust of BC.
In so many ways, it’s also part of healthcare and education. Healthy planet, personal health, urban health, mental health, so many things tie into conservation areas. I like how you talked about those long-term and multi-generational donor relationships. In some ways, it’s a reflection or a mirroring of your Protect Forever, like forever protection of lands, forever protection of donor relationships in some ways too. Last couple of questions here, Jasper, if I may. What’s your elevator pitch to prospective candidates? If someone was thinking about joining you, thinking about throwing their hat into the ring, you’ve highlighted a few things, but how would you summarize what this opportunity’s really all about?
The Elevator Pitch: The Time Is Now
The time is now to protect the nature of BC. We have an amazing opportunity to protect the most biodiverse province in Canada. We have the tools, we have really talented professional staff, we have just so much opportunity and so many great projects that we can deliver if we’re able to bring together the right group of supporters to allow us to continue that work.
Almost every week, a new conservation opportunity comes forward and we would love to be able to maintain the incredible pace of results that we’ve been delivering. In the time that i’ve been with the Nature Trust of BC, we’ve increased our pace of land acquisition by more than six-fold. In 2025, we did in one year the same amount of land acquisitions that used to take us more than six years.
That’s impressive to say the least. That’s remarkable. It again speaks to the need, the opportunity and the prioritization of the work you’re doing. That’s fantastic.
We have ridden a wave of interest in conservation, in protecting nature, in protecting biodiversity. The funding landscape has shifted but the need is as high as it’s ever been. The opportunity for the right leader to help us to maintain this momentum and keep delivering amazing land conservation results is there. The time is now to protect biodiversity, fight climate change, to do that using these tangible tools of land protection, land restoration, land stewardship.
Nature Trust: The time is now to protect the nature of BC.
We have just a passionate team across the organization. People are really excited about the mission and people who want to make a difference. There’s got to be someone out there reading this that can relate to that, that can relate to the ability to create a conservation legacy for tomorrow. For your kids, for your grandkids, for the future of this amazing place that we’re all lucky to live in.
That’s amazing. That’s so nicely put. There’s so much to capture about the work you’ve done, the spaces you’re protecting, and I would encourage anyone to take a look at your website, which is just a wealth of information. NatureTrust.bc.ca. I know it’s being rebranded, it’s being changed, it may be different by the time people read this, for that matter, but it’s already so visually and scientifically and data-driven and so compelling in so many ways.
I’d encourage anyone to take a look at that and reach out to me, [email protected]. Check our website as well for more about the opportunity and the organization. I would definitely encourage people to reach out and engage and ask some great questions about such a wonderful organization. I really appreciate your time, your interest, your passion, your ongoing support on behalf of the province, on behalf of the health and the environment and the natural spaces of the environment. I really appreciate chatting with you, Jasper, and looking forward to introducing some candidates to you in the next little while.
Thanks, Christoph. We’re excited to work with The Discovery Group and you guys have the reputation for being the best of the best at identifying fundraising talent. Here’s an amazing opportunity. We’re looking for an amazing talent to join our team and can’t wait to see who comes forward.
Me too. Looking forward to bringing some great people forward and I appreciate the compliments, that’s for sure.
