If you’ve followed this blog for very long, you’ve seen lots of photos and stories from the Niobrara Valley Preserve. It’s a spectacular place, located on the northern edge of the Nebraska Sandhills – the largest contiguous prairie landscape in North America. Would you like to work there? Of course you would! 

Well…

The Nature Conservancy is hiring a stewardship manager at the Niobrara Valley Preserve (NVP) in north-central Nebraska (near the towns of Johnstown, Ainsworth, and Valentine).  This position will supervise two other full-time land stewardship positions and oversee all land management operations across the site’s 56,000 acres.  We are looking for an experienced person who can bring a creative approach to this role and build/manage a cohesive and energetic stewardship team.

This role encompasses a wide range of land stewardship, including grazing by leased cattle and two resident bison herds, invasive species management, prescribed fire, and more.  The majority of the Preserve is Sandhills prairie, but it also includes tall and mixed-grass prairie, bur oak and ponderosa pine savannas, deciduous woodland, streams and wetlands, and more.  Our land management has two primary goals: 1) to sustain biological diversity and ecological resilience; and 2) to develop and test innovative stewardship approaches that can inspire land management elsewhere.

We envision that the NVP stewardship manager will be working in the field about 75% of the time.  In addition, they will be responsible for employee supervision, management planning, grazing and hunting leases, bison herd management, and infrastructure related to land stewardship (fence, livestock water facilities, equipment, and buildings. 

If you’re interested, visit nature.org/careers, click on ‘join our team’, and search for job #54636 to see the full job announcement. Applications are due February 16.

IN ADDITION, there are a few days left to apply for a Prescribed Fire Specialist position (job #54585) that will also be based at the Niobrara Valley Preserve. This position will help train and provide technical assistance to private landowners and others in the Nebraska Sandhills. They’ll also help conduct burns on private land in the Sandhills, as well as at the Niobrara Valley Preserve. Applications for this job are due Feb 2.

Here are some more photos of the Niobrara Valley Preserve…