National Parks Conservation Association Announces David Lamfrom as Vice President of Regional Programs

Knoxville, TN – The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) today announced that David Lamfrom, has been named Vice President of Regional Programs. In this role, David will support NPCA’s twelve regional teams and their efforts to protect our national parks across the country. He will also continue his leadership role to help NPCA internally and externally advance efforts related to Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. David most recently served as NPCA’s Southeast Regional Director.

David becomes the first person of color to serve in this senior leadership role for NPCA. In addition to his unquestionable park expertise, he brings invaluable lived experience to work with him every day. In his long career as an advocate for our parks, David has worked across and recognized the power of difference, resiliency and fortitude, and navigating difficult circumstances. This lived experience has influenced his work as a campaigner and self-described policy wonk, helping him bridge divides on crucial issues. One of David’s key priorities is to help NPCA understand, acknowledge, and address difficult history and false narratives, and to build grassroots power and capacity that can create lasting change.

To that end, in David’s various roles with NPCA, he has worked for more than a decade with local communities, communities of color, and tribal partners to create one of North America’s largest protected landscapes totaling more than 11 million acres in the California and Nevada deserts. The protected lands included the designation of new national monuments, Wilderness Areas, Wild and Scenic Rivers, and a new national park site, Castle Mountains. His work also supported tribal-led efforts to stop a water-mining pipeline project that threatened sacred desert springs in Mojave Trails National Monument; helped stop an industrial wind project that threatened the cultural viewshed into the Park Service’s first Traditional Cultural Property at Spirit Mountain; and helped launch NPCA’s national Wildlife Program as its first director.

“As NPCA enters its second century, I couldn’t imagine a stronger leader than David Lamfrom to guide our work, from our offices in Anchorage to New York City. During his years with NPCA, David has proven time and again to be a powerful and tireless community leader and mentor, who has achieved tremendous victories and empowered advocates to advance our country’s conservation legacy,” said Theresa Pierno, President and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Prior to career with NPCA, David worked as a wildlife biologist, researching reptiles and amphibians of the Cumberland Plateau such as box turtles, salamanders, and timber rattlesnakes. He believes in the power of storytelling, believes people are inherently good, and knows that diversifying the environmental movement will not only make it stronger and more effective and more relevant, but that the food will be better. David is a published author, photographer, and last week he messed around and got a triple double.

“I am humbled and energized to work with people across our nation who I admire and respect so deeply, to protect these irreplaceable stories and the living landscapes that hold them,” said David Lamfrom. “We realize that everyone who is needed to do this work is not here yet, and we’re prepared to take the necessary steps to fix that. The conservation community must listen more carefully, learn from local knowledge and wisdom, and stretch fully into our humanity to truly be who we are and who is needed to do this work.”

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About the National Parks Conservation Association: Since 1919, the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) has been the leading voice in safeguarding our national parks. NPCA and its nearly 1.4 million members and supporters work together to protect and preserve our nation’s most iconic and inspirational places for future generations. For more information, visit www.npca.org.