Do you know some young person just starting or just ready to start a professional career in North Dakota? Someone who’s a good communicator — maybe a journalism degree) — and is interested in the outdoors (especially North Dakota’s Bad Lands)?

Well, I’ve got an idea for them. I’ve been a member of an organization for more than 20 years that works every day to protect those Bad Lands, a bunch that punches way above their weight class, and wins most of the time.

It’s the Badlands Conservation Alliance, headquartered in Bismarck but always with a keen eye to the western horizon and to the goings-on in the state and federal government agencies that can (and often do) make bad decisions with lasting impacts on the grasslands, buttes and streams of western North Dakota.

The BCA’s founding executive director retired a couple of years ago after 20 years of building memberships and serving as a spokesperson for North Dakota’s conservation community. Her volunteer board has soldiered on, but the BCA need a full-time executive director to lead it into the future.

This is a job that pays well and has professional office space in partnership with several other leading conservation organizations. But it’s not a daily desk job. It involves numerous trips each year to the Bad Lands, for business and pleasure.

You know somebody who wants to get paid for leading hikes through Theodore Roosevelt National Park? The next one, this summer, is going to be in search of North Dakota’s oldest and largest cottonwood tree in the valley of the Little Missouri State Scenic River. There’s a few folks who know pretty much where it is, but there’s an adventure waiting for those willing to hike down to the river in Bad Lands back country (and huff and puff back up) in search of this iconic symbol of everything good about North Dakota.

If you know somebody, tell them to get out their computer, and send them here to look at the job description: www.badlandsconservationalliance.org. You won’t be sorry. And neither will they.