Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed – Next Generation Leadership

For Hally Strevey, leading the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed isn’t just a way to earn a paycheck. It’s an opportunity to provide the next generation of Northern Colorado families with the same access to a healthy watershed that she grew up with. 

“I was actually born in Fort Collins, so I’m working in my home watershed, which is a big honor for me,” Strevey said.

CPRW “started as an informal collaborative back in 2012 in response to the High Park and Hewlett Gulch wildfires, which burned 90,000 acres in the watershed,” she said. The coalition became a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 2013 with a mission “to improve and maintain the ecological health of the Poudre River watershed through community collaboration.”

The organization’s “ability to bring people together — the collaboration piece — is really key to everything we do,” Strevey said. “We’re a staff of five people, and the work that we do couldn’t be accomplished without support from our stakeholders and community members.”

Strevey began working at CPRW in 2015, “when it was just myself and our previous director,” she said. “I was actually just the second staff (member) to be hired by the organization. Since that time I’ve done pretty much everything that you can imagine, I’ve had every position in the organization that exists.”

A graduate of Colorado State University, Strevey became CPRW’s executive director in 2021.

She maintains close ties to her alma mater through the coalition’s collaboration with scientists, Stevey said. “We work with researchers from CSU and others to track the outcomes of our projects.”

Years of collecting data has allowed CPRW to develop some baseline metrics for watershed health that have allowed researchers to better gauge the impacts of recent events such as the Cameron Peak Fire in 2020.

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