About Donna Erickson Consulting

Donna Erickson is a land-use and landscape planning consultant in Missoula, Montana with particular expertise in the conservation of open and working land. She uses her expertise in natural resource problem-solving to address changing western landscapes.  Her projects focus on the natural, social, and economic values of open and working land.  She is committed to working with non-profit organizations, agencies, landowners, and citizens toward the conservation of important open and natural landscapes throughout the West. 

A native of a Missoula area ranch, Erickson was a professor at the University of Michigan for 17 years.  Her work in the UM School of Natural Resources and Environment included teaching and research on open-space and landscape-scale conservation planning.  She was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003-04.  She regularly collaborated with biological, physical, and social scientists in strategic planning for conservation lands.  She was on the Landscape Architecture Program faculty and a participant in the School’s nationally-regarded Ecosystem Management Initiative. 


Erickson holds landscape architecture degrees from Wageningen University in The Netherlands and Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. She is the author of MetroGreen: Connecting Open Space in North American Cities, published by Island Press in 2006.  Her work has also been published in Landscape and Urban Planning, Land Use Policy, Landscape Architecture, Landscape Ecology, and Environmental
Management, among other publications. In addition, applied work has been published in collaboration with the National Park Service and other agencies and organizations. 

Erickson came home to Montana in 2005, leading a county-wide open-lands conservation initiative for Five Valleys Land Trust and Missoula County. This work contributed significantly to getting a $10 million open space bond on the ballot, which passed with great results. 

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