Port Townsend Marine Science Center honors a vital leader in conservation from the Jefferson Land Trust
PORT TOWNSEND, Wash. – A selection committee convened by the Port Townsend Marine Science Center (PTMSC) has chosen Erik Kingfisher as the recipient of the 2025 Eleanor Stopps Environmental Leadership Award. The award was announced at the annual PTMSC Stewardship Breakfast, held at Fort Worden State Park on Tuesday, November 18.
As Jefferson Land Trust’s Director of Stewardship and Resilience, Erik Kingfisher leads JLT’s stewardship program. Erik works directly with landowners, volunteers, and other partners to monitor, protect, and restore conservation easement protected properties, and supports the Preserve Manager with the stewardship of the Land Trust-owned Preserves. Erik has worked in land conservation since 1999 and has served as JLT’s Stewardship Director since 2008. A founding member and past President (2013–2014) of the Washington Association of Land Trusts, he brings extensive experience in collaboration and community engagement.
Erik Kingfisher
Erik was one of the primary developers and authors of the Jefferson Land Trust’s Conservation Plan – a 100 year vision of what the needs are and the challenges to our natural environment in this county. In this Plan, developed with extensive community input, Erik advocated for and authored the elements dealing with climate resilience that are woven throughout the plan. The nature of his work – protecting habitat, working farms and forests are all an essential part of building a sustainable future for this community. Erik lives by the motto “Think globally, act locally. Think forever, act now”.
“Erik Kingfisher is exactly who the Eleanor Stopps Environmental Leadership Award was created to honor,” says Port Townsend Marine Science Center Executive Director Diane Quinn. “He is a lodestar for our community, thoughtfully leading us to a deeper understanding of the natural world we depend on and strategically leading us to plan for a sustainable future. Any opportunity to work alongside Erik and the Jefferson Land Trust is our good fortune at PTMSC, and we know we share this feeling with the entire community.”
With a BA in Environmental Education, an MA in Environmental Politics, and a passion for education Erik created and annually leads the Land Trust’s popular Tidelands to Timberline adult natural history course, and supervises other On-The-Land-Learning community engagement programs of the Land Trust.
Erik provided the inspiration for and designed the Jefferson Land Trust Northwest Naturalist Course. The course is aimed at building a new cadre of community and conservation leaders. The course, which is offered each spring, is an eight week intensive and takes participants from the shoreline to the timberline. Many of the course participants describe it as “transformative”.
About the Eleanor Stopps Environmental Leadership Award
From the 1960s through the 1990s, Eleanor Stopps was an active member of the Pacific Northwest conservation community. She founded the Admiralty Audubon Chapter and was a primary driver behind the establishment of the Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1982. Today it is a critical habitat link in the preservation of the entire Salish Sea ecosystem, providing breeding grounds for pigeon guillemots and rhinoceros auklets, bald eagles and peregrine falcons, harbor seals and elephant seals, and myriad other species.
Stopps died in April 2012 at the age of 92.
The leadership award created in her memory is presented annually to a citizen(s) of the North Olympic Peninsula (Jefferson and Clallam counties) who has led a successful resource conservation effort that benefits the North Olympic Peninsula and its residents directly; acted as a community catalyst for programs, initiatives or ventures that demonstrate a commitment to the future of the earth and its biodiversity; become a model for future leaders in business and education; or has been an exemplary citizen or policy maker who has implemented decisions that, though they may entail risks, have helped our communities take the next step towards environmental sustainability.
The PTMSC has sponsored this annual award since 2009.