Steve McConnell has been on board since January of 2017. Immediately prior to Steve’s move to Billings, Steve worked as a Regional Extensions Specialist in Forestry for Washington State University. Housed in Spokane, he covered most of north- and southeast Washington and, as most of the population of eastern Washington (84%) lives in cities, it was in that position that Steve began his urban forestry career in earnest. Steve’s formal education includes a B.S. in Forest Resources Management from the University of Washington, an M.S. in Forest Ecology from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology and Management from the University of Idaho. Steve is a long-time member of the Society of American Foresters an organization in which he has held numerous leadership positions and was a persistent advocate for bringing urban forestry into the fold, now an official position of the SAF. Steve is also a past member of the Association of Natural Resource Extension Professionals and a new member of the International Society of Arboriculture. Steve has 5 children, 2 of them now off in college, and collectively they have been his passion and recipient of whatever time was not allocated to work and the business of living for the past 20 years. With them he has ridden bikes, chauffeured aspiring gymnasts, dancers, artists and soccer/football/basketball players to practices, games and performances and watched everything from Dragon Tales, Disney Channel to Breaking Bad with them as their interests changed over the years. He has also had memorable fishing trips which sometimes led to great success at catching fish but more often than not were highlighted by trying to re-capture worms let loose by younger siblings and watching favorite lures disappear to ill-advised casts into trees. Before kids, Steve loved reading, fishing, bird watching and biking and one day soon will do all of those things once again. For now, outside of his children, nothing brings Steve more joy than planting trees into an area that lacks them, working with his crew to maintain the trees Billings already has and helping city residents better appreciate their urban forest by communicating to them the multiple benefits trees provide and the many ways they improve our quality of life.
