The Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust recently held its annual meeting and elected a new slate of officers and two new members to its Board of Directors, each for three year terms.
Affie Ellis, a member of the Navajo Nation, is president of Ellis Public Affairs, a public and government relations firm based in Cheyenne. She previously litigated as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Wyoming and advised the State on natural resource law. Mrs. Ellis is also an adjunct professor in the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Wyoming and serves on the national Tribal Law and Order Commission. Formerly, Mrs. Ellis worked as a policy advisor for Senator Craig Thomas and President George W. Bush appointed her Director of Congressional and Public Affairs for the National Indian Gaming Commission. Affie is married to Dennis Ellis and is the mother of two children.
A majority of the Stock Growers Land Trust’s Board of Directors is appointed by its parent organization, the WY Stock Growers Association. At its Annual Winter Convention, the Association appointed Mantha Phillips, of Phillips and Co., of Casper to the Land Trust’s Board. A principal in Phillips & Company Ranch Investments and River Island Ranch Quarter Horses, Ms. Phillips serves as President of WY Ag in the Classroom, Commissioner on Wyoming’s Pari-Mutuel Commission, and WY Stock Growers Board of Directors for Natrona County. The former State Director for Congresswoman Barbara Cubin, Ms. Phillips also chaired the Stock Growers Association’s Wildlife Committee.
The Board of Directors of the Stock Growers Land Trust also elected Alvin Wiederspahn as its Chairman. Born in Cheyenne, Mr. Wiederspahn’s private law practice specializes in the areas of public utility law, municipal finance, real property, health care, wills and trusts, securities and corporate law. A former member of the Wyoming Legislature, both in the House and the Senate, Mr. Wiederspahn has served as Chairman of the Board of Rocky Mountain Bank and as Chairman of Rocky Mountain Financial Corporation. He also served as President and CEO of the Bank and as a director of First National Bank of Wyoming. Mr. Wiederspahn is active in historic preservation and a wide variety of civic and community activities.
Other officers elected by the Land Trust included the election of Ed Prosser as Treasurer. Prosser is a cattle rancher and former legislator from Cheyenne and was appointed to to the Land Trust Board of Directors in 2011 by the WY Stock Growers Association. The Board also re-elected Alan Barnett for another term as Vice Chairman. Barnett has served on the Land Trust Board as a Member At Large since 2007 and works for Farm Credit Services of America. The Stock Growers Land Trust has held a conservation easement on his ranch since 2005.
The Executive Vice President of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, Jim Magagna, continues as an ex oficio member of the Land Trust’s Board and was re-elected as the Board secretary. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association, which has represented the Cowboy State’s livestock industry since 1872, founded the Stock Growers Land Trust in response to landowner interest in an agriculturally-oriented alternative to working with environmental groups to conserve working ranches.
The Stock Growers Land Trust, formed in December of 2000, is now the 9th largest of 1,659 regional land trusts in the US and holds almost 170,000 acres in conservation easements through partnerships with 48 Wyoming ranch families. It is a member of the Partnership of Rangeland Trusts, an association of seven statewide land trusts also including California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Oregon, and Texas affiliated with statewide agricultural organizations in their respective states. Collectively, PORT members hold and administer over 1,150 permanent conservation easements encompassing more than 1.8 million acres of private, working lands.