Friends of Nachusa Grasslands Executive Director

Mike Saxton

For 15 years, Friends of Nachusa Grasslands has been a volunteer organization dedicated to helping provide for the long-term care and management of the project. The Nature Conservancy owns and operates Nachusa Grasslands. The Friends are helping to build endowments, conduct and encourage stewardship, support education and scientific activity, and fund land acquisition.

Friends has now hired their first employee, Mike Saxton, as their Executive Director. He will assume the Executive Director position in January 2026.

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• Mike has a long history with Nachusa. He was on our seasonal crew several times, helped build our bison fence for two years, and spent a few winters doing brush work at our DNR neighbor.
• For the last eleven years, he has been the vice president of Friends. He has been involved in our fundraising and communications efforts, in addition to serving on our Science Grant committee for many years.
  
• Mike earned a master’s degree in geography from Northern Illinois University with a study at Nachusa.
  

• For ten years, he has been the Manager for Ecological Restoration and Land Stewardship at the Missouri Botanical Garden Shaw Nature Reserve in Missouri, where he worked to make it a Nachusa South. Mike ramped up volunteer stewardship and also increased controlled burns, brush thinning, and seeds collected for restorations.
  
• Mike also worked in the Chicago office of The Nature Conservancy supporting philanthropy and was a volunteer coordinator for the Cook County Forest Preserves. 

Mike at Nachusa

UPDATED 12/2025