Kate Merlin

Climate & Energy Program Colorado Attorney

Katherine Lynn Toan Merlin is WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program Colorado Attorney. She earned her J.D. from Vermont Law School in 2008, and an LLM in Natural Resources Law from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2013. Prior to joining Guardians she worked as a solo attorney in public interest environmental litigation and administrative law to protect Colorado’s people and places from the numerous harms imposed by the oil and gas industry. Raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Kate began her career to protect the environment after a three-month trek through the southwest with the National Outdoor Leadership School. She earned a B.S. in environmental science from Northern Arizona University before beginning her career in law.

Matt Nykiel

Climate & Energy Program Attorney

Matt is a Climate & Energy program attorney for WildEarth Guardians. Matt’s work focuses on protecting New Mexico and communities across the West from the impacts of oil and gas extraction and use. He became concerned about fossil fuels after witnessing the effects of climate change as a wildland firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service. Seeking opportunities to protect public lands and the environment generally, Matt went to law school at the University of Colorado. After graduating, he clerked for a state district court judge in Colorado and then relocated an hour south of the Canadian Border, in Idaho, to work on energy and water quality issues with the Idaho Conservation League. Matt, his partner, Ruth, and their pup, Frisbee, love being back in Southwest and spending time in the mountains and on the water.

Betsy Gaines Quammen

Member, Board of Directors

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and conservationist. She received a doctorate in Environmental History from Montana State University in 2017, her dissertation focusing on Mormon settlement and public land conflicts. She has studied various religious traditions over the years, with particular attention to how cultures view landscape and wildlife. The rural American West, pastoral communities of northern Mongolia, and the grasslands of East Africa have been her main areas of interest. After college in Colorado, caretaking for a bed and breakfast in Mosier, Oregon, and serving breakfasts at a cafe in Kanab, Utah, Betsy settled in Bozeman, Montana, where she now lives with her husband, writer David Quammen, two huge dogs, an overweight cat, and a pretty big python named Boots. She is the author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West.

Matthew Koehler

Communications Manager

Matthew Koehler joined WildEarth Guardians as the Communications Manager in 2020, bringing 25 years of experience working to protect and defend public lands, wildlife, wilderness, and democracy. He grew up in the rural Wisconsin Village of Elkhart Lake, surrounded by the Kettle Moraine State Forest, where his family goes back six generations. His love for nature came from his parents, a housepainter and a nurse, and time the family spent hiking, canoeing, cross-country skiing, and camping on public lands. He moved to Missoula, Montana in 1995 after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside with a history degree and later obtained a secondary teaching certificate from the University of Montana, for history and English. Voted best activist by the Missoula Independent in 2007 and awarded the Fund for Wild Nature’s “grassroots activist of the year” in 2010, he enjoys gardening, cooking, and spending time in nature.

Leia Barnett

Greater Gila Campaigner

Born and raised in the foothills and arroyos of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, Leia is thrilled to bring her love and deep reverence for the high desert country of the Southwest to the Greater Gila campaign. Leia graduated summa cum laude from the University of New Mexico’s cultural anthropology program, where she focused on the ways the more-than-human world can be reimagined through anthropological theory and practice. When she’s not endeavoring to understand the complexities of a successful conservation campaign, Leia can be found mountain-side or river-side, praising the feathered and four-legged ones, and planning her next epic snack.

Luciana Nino

Field Organizer

Luciana Nino grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico where she became passionate about government and criminal justice. She spent 2 years studying Criminal Justice and another 4 working on her Bachelors in Government. When she’s not learning, Luciana spends most of her time working to elect progressive candidates around southern New Mexico. Luciana developed a passion for the environment and native wildlife while living near the peaks of the Organ Mountains. As an Organizer for WildEarth Guardians, Luciana works with residents in southern New Mexico who care about protecting wildlife, conserving water, and the threats posed by the border wall. Currently she lives on a half acre land where she has chickens, rabbits, goats, and her fur babies.

Nadine Nadow

Policy Advocate

Nadine joined WildEarth Guardians in 2019 as the Colorado Policy Advocate for the Energy and Wildlife Programs. She has dedicated her career to promoting environmental law and policy initiatives and works passionately to protect wild places. She spent the last few years between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Rocky Mountains of Montana. She received her J.D. from Vermont Law School and her B.A. from University of Vermont. Nadine loves spending time with her family, husband and adventure dog, playing in the mountains, deserts, and in the beautiful landscapes between.

Nadine Nadow

Colorado Policy Advocate

Nadine joined WildEarth Guardians in 2019 as the Colorado Policy Advocate for the Energy and Wildlife Programs. She has dedicated her career to promoting environmental law and policy initiatives and works passionately to protect wild places. She spent the last few years between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Rocky Mountains of Montana. She received her J.D. from Vermont Law School and her B.A. from University of Vermont. Nadine loves spending time with her family, husband and adventure dog, playing in the mountains, deserts, and in the beautiful landscapes between.

Jennifer Schwartz, J.D.

Staff Attorney

Jennifer Schwartz joined WildEarth Guardians in 2019 as a Staff Attorney with a focus on protecting the American West’s wondrous, yet imperiled native species. A long-standing biodiversity advocate and lover of wild places, Jennifer has worked with numerous environmental groups for over two decades. Though her social justice and civil litigation interests are varied, she has spent most of her career as a litigator defending the Pacific Northwest’s grasslands, forests, river canyons, and sagebrush steppe ecosystems from destructive logging, livestock grazing, road-building, and motorized recreational abuse.

Jennifer holds a J.D. from Lewis & Clark law school and a B.A. in Politics from U.C. Santa Cruz. After becoming a mother in 2012, Jennifer started her own solo practice representing non-profits and neighborhood groups in their quests to protect Oregon’s invaluable natural resources.

Jennifer enjoys traveling, learning about natural and cultural history, and teaching her young son to be a respectful inhabitant of planet Earth.

Eleni Ho-On

Executive Administrative Assistant

Eleni Ho-On hails from the suburbs of Chicago and thanks her lucky stars that she was able to escape city life by spending summers at her grandmother’s home on the lake in northern Michigan. Searching for Petoskey stones, swimming through the clear waters of the lake, rescuing turtles and frogs from the road and getting lost in the stars of the dark night sky fueled her appreciation and respect for nature.

Her past working experiences have included a farm to table inspired bakery, Italian vineyards and the wine making process and most recently some time at the Chicago Patagonia store in Lincoln Park where she first learned of WildEarth Guardians. Within the last few years, Eleni had spent summers in Santa Fe with her partner and was immediately drawn to the juxtaposition of the deeply forested mountains and vast desert landscapes. Never tiring of the southwestern sky, she is thrilled to be a part of Guardians’ commitment to defend the wild places she loves.