Founding Board Director
Director of Science and Research, Three Waters Reserve
Senior Ecologist, Lehnhardt Ecological Consulting, LLC
Founding and Current Board Member: Lower Sugar River Watershed Association, Southern Wisconsin Land Conservancy
Susan Lehnhardt is an artist and consulting ecologist who has devoted her skills as a field botanist and land restoration specialist over the past thirty years to helping landowners and land stewards restore natural beauty and ecological health to their wild and working lands. Fundamental to her work is empowering people with a foundational understanding of the natural history of the land and its potential for recovery. As an advocate of community education and empowerment, she led an effort in 2010 to create a local watershed organization to bring people together to solve the growing problem of nutrient enrichment of local streams and rivers and contamination of local aquifers. In 2018 she helped co-found a local land conservancy to help landowners protect natural and working lands in southcentral Wisconsin. She serves as the Director of Science and Research for the conservancy’s Three Waters Reserve land protection project, which restored a former golf course and established a community events center and educational facility for local and regional communities. Susan joins the AE Institute to share her love of the natural world and to help broaden the impact of AEI’s mission throughout diverse human communities. Susan lives in rural Green County, Wisconsin with her partner Steve and dog Apache, where they helped raise Susan’s son Noah and returned an 80-acre farm to native prairie and savanna habitats. Their love of wild places has led them to do research and explore remote wilderness areas around the world.
