Introducing Lizzy McKeag: IWF’s North Idaho Field Representative
Joining IWF as its first remote employee, Lizzy will be amplifying the voices of sportsmen and women in natural resource management discussions in the northern reaches of our state.
Lizzy grew up in rural Texas in a family that’s nuts about hunting and fishing. Her favorite memories include hunting whitetails with her dad every November, kayaking and fishing the south Llano river outside her family’s ranch, and dove hunting with her buddies in college. She received a bachelor’s degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Management from Texas Tech University before moving to the Midwest, where she earned a Master’s in Biology from Northern Illinois University.
When Lizzy got the offer to work out west, she didn’t even hang around long enough to walk the stage for her grad school graduation. She worked as a wildlife biologist in Wyoming for three years, where her work focused on the use of collaborative public/private partnerships to solve complex natural resource issues. She worked with a wide range of species, including the Wyoming toad, black-footed ferret, white-tailed prairie dog, moose, greater sage-grouse, and northern long-eared bat. This work solidified Lizzy’s philosophy that all good conservation is relationship-based, and that natural resource management is most effective when all stakeholders are offered a seat at the discussion table. Her time in Wyoming also caused Lizzy to fall deeply in love with western big game hunting on public lands (as well as the guy who took her on her first elk hunt).
The draw of the Lower Salmon and Clearwater Rivers, as well as access to huge expanses of national forest and wilderness right out their backdoor, led Lizzy and her husband to Grangeville in 2017. Before joining IWF, she worked as a range technician with the BLM and volunteered with the Idaho Soil and Water Conservation District enhancing salmon and steelhead habitat. She also serves on committees for the Grangeville Farmers Market and the local chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation. While all of this keeps her really, really busy, Lizzy firmly believes in the importance of civic engagement and personally investing in the community she loves so much.
Lizzy is happiest with her feet in a river and a fly rod in her hands. She is fiercely passionate about the fight to get Idaho’s salmon and steelhead runs back, and she wants sportsmen and women to be the loudest voice in the room. If you agree and want to be involved, you can reach out to her at lmckeag@idahowildlife.org.
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