Photo by Terry Shepherd
Portage Glacier, Alaska, 2007

Harold Shepherd
Acting Executive Director

Harold has been working in water law, environmental law, Indian law and as an activist for over 20 years.  He received an undergraduate degree in Range Management from Colorado State University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Oregon Law School.  Currently licensed in Oregon and Washington, he is applying to the Utah State Bar for admission.  He has worked for a variety of entities, including the Umatilla and Siletz Tribes of Oregon, the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho and the Colville Tribes of Washington.  In addition, he has been Executive Director/Staff Attorney for the Center for Water Advocacy since 2003.

Our Specialists

Josie Kovash
Conservation & Outreach

Josie is a graduate of Stanford who has been living in Moab for three years.  She grew up in Telluride and spent some time in San Francisco after college.  Since she's been in Moab, she has been involved in community efforts such as Canylonlands Sustainable Solutions and the WabiSabi Fashion Show.  She splits her work time between Red Rock Forests, where she organized the Wild and Scenic Film Festival and the Inaugural Ball, writes for the newsletter, and does community organizing around critical issues such as oil and gas development on sensitive lands.  In 2009, Josie will also assume the position of Head Gardener with Moab's Youth Garden Project.  She loves cats, enjoys hosting a weekly radio show on KZMU - Moab's Community Radio and playing in an up-and-coming garage band.

Hillary Mead
Inventory / Finances

Hillary grew up in Pennsylvania, and moved west after receiving a degree in Computer Science from Cornell University in 1996.  After working for Corporate America in Portland, Oregon for five years, she relocated to Moab in 2002 with her dog and tiny camper.  In Moab, Hillary has held a variety of jobs, including hospital secretary, waitress, and office manager.  Her favorite, though, was surveying trails as a volunteer for the Forest Service in 2002.  In 2008, she went into business for herself as a bookkeeper specializing in non-profit organizations.  In addition to managing the finances at Red Rock Forests, Hillary is also our field inventory specialist for the Abajos motorized route and dispersed campsite inventory project for 2009.

Evan Clapper
Intern / Inventory

Evan comes to us as an intern from Mesa State in Grand Junction.  Residing in Moab with his wife and two children, Evan is working on our dispersed inventory project, analyzing data that will be used to recommend more low-impact policies for aspen and water-rich sites on the Forest.  He is also working in tandem with Hillary to complete our Abajos route inventory.

Board of Directors

Kalen Jones - President

Kalen has spent years working for the environment and better government in southeastern Utah.  Among his accomplishments are participation in the Grand County Access Committee; years of formal comment letters opposing the damage created by off-road vehicles on public lands; ongoing involvement with community planning in Moab City; and numerous wilderness inventory trips for the Utah Wilderness Coalition.  He helped conceive and propose a citizens' travel system for Grand County and has worked to keep our air and water unpolluted and our land untrammeled.  He and his partner, an architect, live in Moab and design earth-friendly homes and developments.

Paul Frank - Vice President 

Paul grew up in the Front Range of Colorado. He embarked on an educational tour of Colorado's universities and colleges throughout the seventies.  After stints as a factory worker and a BLM botanist in the Mojave Desert he moved to central Utah.  There he worked at a USFS research lab. This inspired him to start a native seed business and he moved to Moab in the mid eighties where he proceeded on a slow march to bankruptcy.  Giving up the seed business he embraced the life of an itinerant contract biologist specializing in desert tortoises and has walked many thousands of miles across the Mojave and Sonoran deserts conducting tortoise research and surveys.  He and his wife live in Moab and like to take long treks into the mountains and deserts of the West whenever possible.

Wayne Hoskisson, At-Large Board Member

Long-time RRF supporters will recognize Wayne as a past ExecutiveDirector of Red Rock Forests. Wayne has remained active in Southeast Utah issues. He is currently serving on the Moab City Planning Council and is Chair of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club. In 2008, Wayne was the Democratic candidate for District 55 of the Utah House of Representatives. For the past few years, Wayne has been doing extensive field work in Southeast Utah, documenting range and grazing allotment conditions, evaluation potential reference areas on the Manti-La Sal, Dixie and Fishlake National Forests, and participating in the Tushar Grazing Collaboration project. He is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young and lives among the red rocks of southeastern Utah. We are pleased to have Wayne officially back among theRed Rock Forests' fold, as we are always in need of his expertise and memory about pastprojects.

Joe Neuhof, At-Large Board Member

Joe is the West Slope Field Director for the Colorado Environmental Coalition in Grand Junction, Colorado. After finishing his Masters in environmental leadership at Naropa in Boulder, Joe moved to Grand Junction to start working with CEC. Before moving to Colorado, Joe was both acting executive director and deputy director of Save Our Streams in Maryland, where he led various types of coalition and canvassing projects to protect the watersheds in and around the Chesapeake Bay. He has a BA in environmental policy and geography from the University of Maine. Joe has been actively engaging with Red Rock Forests in the past few years on issues of oil shale and energy. This June, Joe joined us for our Archaeology Workshop in the Abajos (that's where we hooked him on RRF!).

Will Petty, At-Large Board Member

After earning a B.A. in Computer Science from Brown University, Will lived in New York and Tokyo, finally moving to Moab in 1988. His company, Technica Pacifica, produces English language educational materials for Japanese businessmen and scientists, and is one of Moab’s largest employers. He also owns a couple of Southeast Utah’s funkier businesses, including the Jailhouse Cafe in Moab and Fry Canyon Lodge near Natural Bridges National Monument and White Canyon. At one point he holed up at the Happy Jack Mine, thinking he might live out his days hiking and playing his violin to the soaring cliffs of that remote expanse of canyon country. Somehow he got snared by the idea of building friendlier, healthier communities in Southeastern Utah and moved to Moab. He has long been an enthusiastic supporter of SUWA and other local environmental groups. He is married with two children, and spends as much free time as possible in a shepherd’s trailer at the base of Mount Linneaus in the Abajos.

Matt Redd, At-Large Board Member

Matt is from southeastern Utah where his family are 4th generation ranchers.  His back is in ranching and land management in Utah and Colorado.  Matt has been active in conservation work around the region, working with The Nature Conservancy on its purchase and management of his family's ranch in Indian Creek; and with the San Miguel County Open Space Commission's purchase of development rights program in Colorado where he currently lives.