Leadership

John Meyer is the founder and Executive Director of Cottonwood. John received an undergraduate degree in biology and Spanish from the University of Montana before working as a seasonal biologist for the Flathead and Tongass National Forests.

John spent two summers in northwest Montana getting dropped off on the side of a road with a map and compass. He surveyed for threatened and endangered plants alone in grizzly bear habitat where the Forest Service wanted to log.

One day while surveying for rare plants in an area that had burned, John ran into this baby fawn. At the time, one of Montana’s U.S. Senators was telling the public that the area needed to be salvaged logged. Looking down at that fawn, John realized that the forest would not go to waste if the area was not logged. He went to law school.

John graduated with honors from Vermont Law School in 2009. During school, he clerked for Jack Tuholske, Tom Woodbury, EarthJustice, the Sierra Club, and Vermont Law School’s Natural Resource Clinic. John skipped his law school graduation to climb in Yosemite National Park. After graduation, John lived in this yurt without running water or electricity in southwest Montana for more than five years to get Cottonwood started.

As a father of young identical twins, John is committed to ensuring Rex and Wiley have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. He practices law because he wants them to have the opportunity to hunt wild bison on public lands and ski on glaciers in Montana.

John has published a law review article about the National Forests’ role in fighting climate change and presents to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as attorneys for Continuing Legal Education credit.