Conservation Voters for Idaho names new executive director

The new head of Conservation Voters for Idaho, Ryan McGoldrick, thinks that there is no partisan divide when it comes to protecting public lands.

“That’s why I want to work in a red state like Idaho is because I think it truly is a bipartisan issue,” McGoldrick said. “When you look at things like the polling we did that shows like 96% of Idahoans care about public lands, you really see that this is a bipartisan issue. And if we want to get where we need to be in terms of conservation and clean energy and other environmental issues, it can’t be Democrats versus Republicans. As a conservation community we have to acknowledge that Republicans care deeply about protecting our lands and about clean air and they care about water, and we need to build a conservation movement that includes everyone.”

The board of directors named Ryan McGoldrick as the organization’s new executive director on Oct. 30.

McGoldrick is an experienced conservationist who has been with the organization since 2020. He served most recently as the program director for Conservation Voters for Idaho, or CVI, where McGoldrick focused on protecting public lands, clean energy, civic engagement and voting rights, the organization said. 

As a conservationist, McGoldrick said he focuses on communicating to the public how climate change and environmental protections affect what’s happening at home and impact people’s daily lives directly. 

“I went into environmental studies and marketing with the sort of the goal of how do we better communicate conservation to the general public and how do we reach a bipartisan audience,” McGoldrick said. “So Conservation Voters for Idaho was the perfect organization for me.”

Founded in 2005, Conservation Voters for Idaho is a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization that seeks to elect pro-conservation officials to public office, influence environmental policy and protect voting rights and elections. 

“Ryan McGoldrick brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the role of Executive Director. We are excited by the great work that our organizations will do under Ryan’s leadership,” Nora Carpenter, board chair of Conservation Voters for Idaho Education Fund, said in a written statement.

Public lands protections and data center construction are two pressing conservation issues

McGoldrick said CVI is working with the public, the conservation community and elected officials on two issues that are generating high levels of public interest right now – public lands and data centers. 

“Hearing Sen. (Mike) Lee (R-Utah) suggest selling off public lands was like a wake-up call to so many Idahoans,” McGoldrick said.  “We can disagree about the way we manage our lands or what we prioritize on public lands. But the one thing that we can all agree on is that we shouldn’t be selling off our public lands.”

“We need to make sure that this is a dead and settled issue, that people understand and that elected officials understand, if you want to win in a state like Idaho that you cannot be for public land sale,” McGoldrick added. “Public lands are truly a winning issue in Idaho and I think we saw that in both the primaries and in the general election.”

McGoldrick said data centers have emerged recently as a top issue, and he is worried about the amount of energy and water that data centers use and the impact that building data centers on public land has on wildlife and habitat. 

He’s monitoring multiple proposed data centers in Idaho – including a proposed 4-million-square-foot Rhea Data data center on Bureau of Land Management Land outside of Boise and another data center proposal outside of Twin Falls. 

“For CVI, our three pillars that we focus on are public lands, clean energy and civic engagement, and really right now it feels like data centers hits all three of those,” McGoldrick said. 

McGoldrick said he supports a moratorium on new data center construction in Idaho to study energy use, environmental and water impacts. After the studies are complete, McGoldrick said, then it would make sense to develop new policies, laws and ordinances to govern data centers. 

“We need to hit a short-term pause, and just take a comprehensive look at what does this mean for water? What does it look like for land use, energy use, noise?” McGoldrick said.