Bowen Blair is one of the country’s leading experts at conveying conservation land into public and tribal ownership. As senior vice president at Trust for Public Land (TPL) responsible for land acquisition, Blair oversaw the conveyance into public ownership of approximately two hundred transactions valued at half a billion dollars annually. He started TPL’s Oregon office, managed its Northwest and Midwest regions, and founded TPL’s Tribal and Native Lands Program, which acquired two hundred thousand acres for seventy tribes. At TPL, Blair personally completed thirty-one transactions, including Hetes’wits Wetes (“Precious Land”)—ten thousand acres near Hells Canyon—for the Nez Perce Tribe. That transaction marked the Nez Perce’s first return to Oregon since the War of 1877 and generated international publicity. With colleagues Alan Front and Geoff Roach, Blair also helped negotiate a complex conservation easement over four thousand acres of old growth forest, valued at $32 million, to benefit the Quinault Indian Nation on the Olympic Peninsula.
Before his two-decade stint at TPL, Blair served as executive director for Friends of the Columbia Gorge where he negotiated, and helped lead the lobbying effort to pass, the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act. The act was the only major new public lands bill to pass the Reagan administration. After leaving TPL, Blair and current National Park Service director Chuck Sams founded Indian Country Conservancy, the country’s only national nonprofit focused on returning conservation land to tribes, to help reverse a century of federal policies dispossessing tribes of their lands. In 2012 and 2016, Oregon governors appointed Blair to two four-year terms on the Columbia River Gorge Commission, where he served as chair and vice-chair. In 2023, Blair was appointed by Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland to the National Park System Advisory Board.
Blair received his undergraduate degree from Yale University where he wrote his senior thesis on the U.S. Army’s campaign against the Apache leader Geronimo. He received his Juris Doctorate from Lewis & Clark Law School and published law review articles on the National Scenic Area Act and supporting tribal ownership of cultural artifacts. His book, A Force for Nature: Nancy Russell’s Fight to Save the Columbia Gorge, was published in October 2022 by Oregon State University Press.
Blair lives in Sun Valley, Idaho with his wife Jennifer.
Image by Peter Marbach
Image by Peter Marbach
Bowen Blair is one of the country’s leading experts at conveying conservation land into public and tribal ownership. As senior vice president at Trust for Public Land (TPL)responsible for land acquisition, Blair oversaw the conveyance into public ownership of approximately two hundred transactions valued at half a billion dollars annually. He started TPL’s Oregon office, managed its Northwest and Midwest regions, and founded TPL’s Tribal and Native Lands Program, which acquired two hundred thousand acres for seventy tribes. At TPL, Blair personally completed thirty-one transactions, including Hetes’wits Wetes (“Precious Land”)—ten thousand acres near Hells Canyon—for the Nez Perce Tribe. That transaction marked the Nez Perce’s first return to Oregon since the War of 1877 and generated international publicity. With colleagues Alan Front and Geoff Roach, Blair also helped negotiate a complex conservation easement over four thousand acres of old growth forest, valued at $32 million, to benefit the Quinault Indian Nation on the Olympic Peninsula.
Before his two-decade stint at TPL, Blair served as executive director for Friends of the Columbia Gorge where he negotiated, and helped lead the lobbying effort to pass, the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act. The act was the only major new public lands bill to pass the Reagan administration. After leaving TPL, Blair and current National Park Service director Chuck Sams founded Indian Country Conservancy, the country’s only national nonprofit focused on returning conservation land to tribes, to help reverse a century of federal policies dispossessing tribes of their lands. In 2012 and 2016, Oregon governors appointed Blair to two four-year terms on the Columbia River Gorge Commission, where he served as chair and vice-chair for most of his tenure.
Blair received his undergraduate degree from Yale University where he wrote his senior thesis on the U.S. Army’s campaign against the Apache leader Geronimo. He received his Juris Doctorate from Lewis & Clark Law School and published law review articles on the National Scenic Area Act and supporting tribal ownership of cultural artifacts. His book, A Force for Nature: Nancy Russell’s Fight to Save the Columbia Gorge, will be published in October by Oregon State University Press.
Blair lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Jennifer and their two children Bowen and Louise.