The NDA is proud to announce the hiring of two new professional foresters through a partnership with the natural resource management companies Southern Forestry Consultants and Wiregrass Ecological Associates. The new employees join a growing team and will support NDA stewardship agreements with the USDA Forest Service (USFS), particularly on numerous National Forests across the Midwest and Northeast.
Kurt Lehmann comes to NDA with 11 years of experience and will serve as Senior Forester. He was previously employed by Shamco Inc. as an industrial forester since 2022 and prior to that spent eight years with the USFS as a pre-sale forester, timber strike team supervisory forester, harvest inspector and timber technician. Lehmann is a Michigan Registered Forester and graduated from Michigan Technological University, where he double majored in forestry and wildlife ecology & management. Kurt and his family currently live in Crystal Falls, Michigan near two National Forests – Ottawa and Chequamegon-Nicolet – and run a regenerative farm with pasture-raised chickens, pork and laying hens.
Cody Pefley graduated in 2022 from Northern Michigan University with a bachelor’s degree in biology with a concentration in ecology and from Michigan State University in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in forestry. Cody spent two years with the USFS working in timber sale preparation on the Hiawatha National Forest, as well as working as a wildlife assistant with the Michigan DNR. He has over a decade of personal experience in wildlife and forest management, likes hunting, fishing remote inland lakes, and growing nut-bearing oaks, American chestnuts and Ozark chinquapins. Cody will serve as NDA Stewardship Forester and lives in Escanaba, Michigan.
“I’m excited to work with Kurt and Cody,” said Matt Ross, NDA’s Senior Conservation Director. “They’ll help immensely on numerous conservation projects and land management issues on public land from Minnesota to Maine but will be focused on a significant amount of work we have scheduled within the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.”
Lehmann and Pefley will facilitate a wide range of forestry/habitat improvement and access projects under NDA’s Public Lands Initiative in the USFS Eastern Region, including providing administration of commercial and pre-commercial timber operations, site preparation, reforestation, forest and wildlife inventory, and a host of habitat restoration efforts for over 30 stewardship agreements.