Resource Renewal Institute

About RRI: Huey Johnson

Huey D. Johnson
Huey Johnson is an internationally distinguished environmentalist and practical visionary known as the leading U.S. proponent of green plans. He is also widely respected for his pioneering work on land conservation and environmental policy. Mr. Johnson's career experience includes being an innovator who transforms ideas that promise to benefit society into established working institutions. His work history has been based on the fact that in a free society one can take environmentally relevant ideas and establish them as working organizations. Organizations he has founded include: The Resource Renewal Institute (RRI), The Trust for Public Land (TPL), The Grand Canyon Trust, The Environmental Liaison Center in Nairobi, Defense of Place, and the Aldo Leopold Society. In addition, Mr. Johnson was also responsible for building The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the West, serving for eight years as its Western Regional Director and a year as its President. They are all good examples of his ability to make environmental visions into effective, significant programs.

Mr. Johnson believes that the environment of states and nations is manageable, and we can only manage all of the problem, rather than just a piece at a time. His work experience includes corporate affairs, teaching, performing salmon research in California and Alaska, and overseeing California's environment as Secretary of the Resources Agency. This is a cabinet post with a billion dollar annual budget and fourteen thousand employees. Successful programs he established there include water and energy conservation programs for cities and industries, doubling salmon numbers in the ocean adjoining the state, strengthening forestry policy and preserving wilderness. He led an effort that preserved 1200 miles of wild rivers and another that preserved several million acres of wilderness in California and the west that would have been lost otherwise. His challenges at that time included guiding policy while overseeing a major drought followed by catastrophic floods.

Mr. Johnson has been active in U.S. and global environmental affairs, serving on boards, writing, advising political leaders, and presenting papers and lectures on the environment around the world. He is the author of the book Green Plans: Greenprint for Sustainability (University of Nebraska Press, 1995). Green Plans has been incorporated into the environmental planning curriculum at a number of universities, and is now in its third paperback printing. He wrote an early book, No Deposit, No Return, which was used as a successful textbook. Mr. Johnson's career recognition includes the President's Award for Sustainable Development in 1996, followed by the prestigious Sasakawa Prize in 2001, the annual environmental award given by the United Nations to honor an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the management and protection of the environment.

http://www.hueyjohnson.com