Meet the Team: Stewardship & Land Restoration Manager Lauren Ulich

This is a feature from the Fall/Winter 2024-2025 issue of the Upstate Advocate, Upstate Forever's twice-yearly publication. To read a digital copy of the complete publication, please click here.

Truthfully, I didn’t set out in pursuit of a career in land conservation, but rather started my career with a hyperfocus on native plant conservation. My undergraduate and master’s degrees in horticulture led me to connect with the plant conservation world and opened my eyes to a field of work outside the realm of what most of horticulturists were involved in.

The experiences and connections I made during this time led me to the broader mission of land conservation — a natural fit for someone like me who grew up enjoying the fruits of protected landscapes throughout the Southeast. Since I joined Upstate Forever in 2021, my position has transitioned from one focused simply on monitoring conservation easements to my current role as Stewardship and Restoration Manager. I now oversee the Stewardship program and facilitate restoration projects within our 30,000+ acres of conservation easements across Upstate South Carolina.

Most of my days on the job involve some combination of connecting with landowners and fieldwork as I monitor conservation easements and identify suitable properties for ecological restoration work. Plus, I spend a good bit of time communicating with our two other stewardship staff, Ericka Berg and Trevor Freeman, as well as other members of the Land Conservation team — our work is highly interactive and collaborative.

Easement stewardship is a balancing act. Essential elements of the work include understanding the specific legal parameters of each conservation easement, familiarizing myself with the property, documenting the property’s current condition with photos, and strengthening relationships with landowners. While our overarching goal is easement compliance, it is so much more than that.

While the path to a successful land management project varies greatly, the goal of each project remains the same: to ensure that conservation values, namely habitat and water quality, will persist long into the future. That simplicity is really beautiful to me.

However, the day-to-day work is not always simple. The biggest challenge of land management work is also what makes it so engaging — connecting each unique property and landowner with the most suitable resources, technical assistance, and potential funding.

A project might involve restoration tools such as prescribed fire, invasive species management, native species plantings, or thoughtful timber thinning.

We work closely with our landowners to map out a plan that will help us achieve our mutual conservation goals for the land. It’s a highly collaborative puzzle that often involves several partners to get the work done.

I’m both grateful for and proud of the work I now get to do with the Stewardship and Land Management program — grateful to have gotten the opportunity to launch this initiative and proud of how this vision has come to life. I was already brainstorming about how I would develop this program before I was even offered the job at UF!

Looking into the future, I’m excited to foster more partnerships with conservation organizations that share similar or overlapping goals. These relationships are the secret sauce for leveraging time and resources to see real change happen on the ground.

I also anticipate watching the stewardship program change and grow as we work together as a team to refine, enhance, and strengthen the way we operate. Cheers to many more years!