Lowell E. Baier

Lowell E. Baier’s intellectual curiosity during his 58 year career has taken him from a practicing attorney, to an entrepreneur, a tireless advocate for natural resources and wildlife conservation, and a legal and environmental historian and author.

Baier received his B.A. in economics and political science from Valparaiso University in 1961 and completed his law degree in 1964 at the Indiana University School of Law where he earned a J.D. He also holds an honorary Doctor of Legal Letters (LL.D.) degree awarded in 2010, a Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) awarded in 2015, and a Doctor of Public Service awarded in 2019. After graduation he practiced law in Washington D.C., a city he’d grown to love when in 1956 his Congressman Charles A. Halleck (R-2nd IN) called him to be a Page Boy in the United States House of Representatives after becoming an Eagle Scout. During his early years in the practice of law, he formed Baier Properties, Inc., a Bethesda, Maryland based developer of warehouses, residential properties, and award winning office buildings and shopping centers. Baier’s lifelong passion for protecting the country’s natural resources and wildlife conservation began during his childhood while being raised on a farm in northern Indiana, and spending time on his grandfather’s homestead ranch in Montana. In the early 1970’s, he was one of the original 14 founders of the Wild Sheep Foundation which has funded over $2.6 million annually to re-establish historically extant habitat for the four species of wild sheep in North America. His exploratory work led to similar programs in both Russia and Mongolia. Since 1975, Baier has been active in the Boone and Crockett Club, America’s oldest wildlife conservation organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, and is its first President Emeritus. A well-known advisor to elected officials and educators on environmental and conservation issues, Baier took the lead in drafting President George H.W. Bush’s wildlife conservation agenda in 1989, and has been an advisor and counselor to all successive presidential administrations. Between 1992-2010, Baier led in the creation of Ph.D. programs at 5 separate universities dedicated to postgraduate studies in natural resources and wildlife conservation management. From 2004-2007, he led a national campaign to raise $6.5 million to purchase for the federal government the last and largest remaining piece of privately held land (24,550 acres) that was initially Theodore Roosevelt’s historic Elkhorn Ranch established in 1884 adjacent the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, also once part of the ranch, thus expanding the national park by one-third its size. The Elkhorn is popularly called the “Cradle of Conservation” and the “Walden Pond of the American West” since Theodore Roosevelt here conceived the cornerstones of the American conservation movement between 1884-1887 as we know it today. Baier is the author of the book Saving Species on Private Lands: Unlocking Incentives to Conserve Wildlife and Their Habitats, which was published in 2020. The book was the Winner, 2021 New York City Big Book Award in the Nature category; Winner, 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award in the Business category; Winner, 2021 Independent Press Book Award in the Green/ Conservation category; Winner, 2020 Next Generation INDIE Book Awards, Best Non-Fiction E-book; Silver Medal, 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award in the Reference category; Short List, 2021 The Wildlife Society Annual Publication Award (one of five books so recognized); Short List, 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize; Finalist, 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award Montaigne Medal; Finalist, 2020 Next Generation INDIE Book Awards in the Nature/ Environment category; and, Finalist, 2021 Forest History Society Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award. Baier is also the author of the book Inside the Equal Access to Justice Act: Environmental Litigation and the Crippling Battle over America’s Lands, Endangered Species, and Critical Habitats, published in 2015. The book was named Grand Prize Winner, Best Non-Fiction Book, and Winner in the Science/Nature/Environment category of the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards; Finalist, 2017 Forest History Society Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award; Finalist, 2016 Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year in the Ecology/Environment Category; and, Finalist, 2016 Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year in the History Category. His book Federalism, Preemption, and the Nationalization of American Wildlife Management: The Dynamic Balance Between State and Federal Authority was released in March, 2022, and has already won the following awards: Finalist in the Historical Non-Fiction category and Finalist in the Science/Nature/Environment category of 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Baier’s next book The Codex of the Endangered Species Act: The Last Fifty Years (Volume I), is scheduled for publication in late fall 2022, with Volume II scheduled for publication in 2023. Throughout his career, Baier has tirelessly served on numerous boards and commissions for both the local and federal governments, associations and foundations. Presently, he serves on the Executive Committee of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, President’s Council of the National Wildlife Federation, is Vice Chairman of the National Conservation Leadership Institute, is one of 12 members of the Conservation Leadership Council sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund, and is a member of the Roosevelt-Rockefeller Brothers Conservation Roundtable. He is a member of both the Explorers Club and the Cosmos Club. Baier has been recognized many times for his extraordinary public service at the local level, and for his conservation work nationally. He was Rockville, Maryland’s Citizen of the Year in 1986. In 2008, he was named Conservationist of the Year by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. In 2010 Outdoor Life magazine selected Baier as the Conservationist of the Year, and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies similarly recognized him in 2013. In 2016, the National Wildlife Federation awarded him their highest honor, the Jay N. “Ding” Darling Conservation Award for a lifetime of conservation service. In 2018 he was one of four judges chosen to select the 2019 Duck Stamp image by the Department of Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Indiana University School of Law presented him with its Distinguished Service Award in 2007, and in 2014 he was inducted into the Academy of Law Alumni Fellows, the highest honor the School can bestow on an alumnus. In 2015 Indiana University awarded him the degree Doctor of Humane Letters; thereafter, the law school building at Indiana University was named Baier Hall in his honor, also in 2015. In 2021, he was awarded the University’s Bicentennial Medal. Baier became an Eagle Scout at age 14, and received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award at age 76 from the National Boy Scouts of America. Baier lives in suburban Washington, D.C., and contemporaneously continues to practice law specializing in wildlife conservation and natural resource policy, legislation and regulation, manages his commercial real estate development company, and writes extensively.