Derek Shiels works at Little Traverse Conservancy where he is the Director of Land Stewardship. Prior to LTC, Derek worked with the Leelanau Conservancy and the Missouri Department of Conservation. He has degrees from Grand Valley State University, Taylor University, and Central Michigan University. Derek leads a team of ten and many volunteers that steward 27,000 acres to provide recreational opportunities and manage wildlife habitat. Derek is also wrapping up his second term on city council for the City of Petoskey, MI and serves as a board member of InvestMitt Cooperative.

TSN Conference 2026

January 22nd, 2026 (Thursday) // 1:45 pm – 2:45 pm // Room 104 // Guarding Treasures: A Guide for Assessing Habitat Conditions to Inform Your Management Responses // Protecting land provides the opportunity for conserving habitats and connecting with nature, but stewardship is needed to complete and act on those opportunities. Stewardship can be defined very simply as “wise care” and wisdom requires considering all the facts. Inherent then in stewardship, is the need to have deep knowledge of the lands that are being cared for. We can conserve what we know. This session aims to help land managers with large land holdings develop a framework for gathering ecological knowledge to steward wildlife and their habitats. You are busy and have many responsibilities; being an ecologist is not easy, but we will show why it is necessary and provide examples, ideas, and techniques for how to increase your awareness about the ecological health of the lands you manage and engage in larger landscape-scale conservation. Knowledge-is-key, while a cliché, is vital to identifying degraded lands and then restoring them.