Richard Luckemeier
Board Chair

Richard arrived in the SLV in 1983 and is an Engineer with the City of Alamosa. He is an original SLVEC board member and rejoined the Board in 2007. Richard is an avid hiker, camper and outdoorsman. He spends his spare time roaming in the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountain ranges. He likes to track and photograph the Mexican Wolf in New Mexico.

Suzanne Shriber
Board Secretary

Suzanne arrived in the SLV in 1978. She was first a bus driver for a Migrants school and then became a guidance counselor for the Center Schools System. She did this for 23 years and recently retired. She has been in education for 30 years. She graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She is very involved with the Water Quality Project and works closely with the SLV-LEAP HIGH working group.

Howard Cox, Del Norte, Colorado
Board Treasurer

Howard has lived in the San Luis Valley since 1985.  He works as a Physician’s Assistant at Valley Wide Health Services and the San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center.  Howard is an avid backcountry skier, climber, canyon-eer, and “river rat.”  He became a member of SLVEC in order to protect Wolf Creek Pass from development, and joined the Board in 1999.

David Montgomery
Board Member

Dave is a nationally known landscape painter and a manager for an agribusiness company. Born in North Dakota in 1952, he has lived in Colorado since 1958. Dave has been a persistent voice for conservation and the environment in the San Luis Valley for the past 25 years.

Rex Shepperd, Creede, Colorado
Board Member

Rex is a long-time resident of Creede and has actively worked to protect the wild country in the Creede area.  He is an artist, Methodist minister, and avid hunter and outdoorsman. He is SLVEC's timber and forest expert and owns Shepperd Woodworks, a small woodworking shop that creates wooden crafts and boxes from downed timber. 

Philip Madonna, Crestone, Colorado
Board Member

Phil is a Colorado native, retired in Crestone and enjoying the good life. Prior to retirement, he had a teaching career at the University of Colorado, Health Sciences Center, Denver, which was followed by a psychotherapy practice in Englewood, Colorado. He has two smart and dashing children, both married, and a granddaughter, Bella, who is indeed beautiful. Having been privileged to spend a lifetime at play in the Colorado mountains, he feels it is time to give something back by participating in the work of SLVEC.

Christine Canaly, Crestone, Colorado
Director

Chris joined SLVEC in June 2000.  Chris helped to mobilize key local support to develop legislation designating the Great Sand Dunes National Park as a National Monument. She also worked with Citizens for San Luis Valley Water to protect the Baca Ranch from trans-basin water diversion. She has supported  community service programs and developed infrastructure for Valley non-profit restoration and conservation organizations. Before moving to the Valley in 1988, she worked as a technician with Cable News Network in Atlanta, Georgia.

Matie Belle Lakish
Office Manager/Grant Coordinator

Matie Belle joined SLVEC in the fall of 2007. She is an original Board member of SLVEC and spent years working on the Rio Grande National Forest Management Plan. She was a nutrition educator for the CSU Extension office and has lived in the San Luis Valley since 1993. She enjoys community outreach and education, writing about the SLV and it s environment. She enjoys hiking, creating herbal remedies and preparing wild rabbit. She makes her own soap too.

Joe Vieira
GIS Project Advisor

Joe’s areas of expertise are mainly conservation and Global Information Systems. Since the early 1980s, Joe has been studying and mapping the watersheds above the San Luis Valley of Colorado, swathes of Andean and Amazonian Latin America, Africa’s miombo woodland, and off-beat corners of the American West. He has fought fires for the U.S. Forest Service, worked in agro-forestry in the Andes, worked for CARE/Peace Corps, performed remote sensing and ecosystem monitoring in Mexico, and developed ecotourism for biodiverdity conservation in Bolivia. Joe has coordinated roadless-area mapping for SLVEC since 2001. He now works for the Bureau of Land Management in Canon City, Colorado, as a Natural Resources Specialist in Global Information Systems.

Steven Rivera
Roadless Inventory Advisor

Steve works for United Parcel Service as a night manager. Degreed in Wildlife Biology from Colorado State University, he is a San Luis Valley native and intimately familiar with the mountains surrounding the Valley.

Maria Valdez
Advisor

Maria is a native of the valley and received her Doctorate in American History. She researched the La Sierra Land Grant near the Town of San Luis and advised the Land Rights Council during their lawsuit against the Taylor family regarding community access to the commons. She has been the Solar Coordinator for the SLV, working with the SLV Resource, Conservation and Development Office. She focuses on community rights issues and solar development that benefits local homeowners.