Ann Trosper had retired from a three-decade career in the oil and gas industry when she spotted a listing for a GIS position with the Powell-Clarks Fork Conservation District.

Trosper had been hoping to learn the technology, so she put in an application and landed the job.

As it turned out, she didn’t get much experience with GIS, but Trosper did get plenty of other experiences in what became a nearly two-decade-long tenure with the district.

“It’s a crazy job in that you can see how much needs to be done,” Trosper said, “and every time I’d be just ready to say, ‘Oh, I’ve had enough,’ another project would come up.”

However, she recently decided it was time to head into retirement. She was celebrated at a surprise party last month.

Abby Shuler, who’s one of the district’s five elected supervisors, said the former manager will be missed.

“We’re excited for her retirement, but we’re really sorry to see her go,” Shuler said, describing Trosper as “an absolutely wonderful person.”

“She had a lot of common sense, so it was easy to work with her,” added longtime supervisor Regan Smith. “That’s for sure.”

Dirt babies and stewardship

Conservation districts can tackle a host of issues related to the conservation of soil and water, including protecting agricultural resources, preserving habitat and helping reduce silt in streams. For the Powell district, that’s ranged from providing soil information to subdivision developers to collecting water samples from Bitter Creek to check levels of fecal coliform to helping develop a response to a major silt spill at the Willwood Dam in 2016.

Trosper also paid a number of visits to Southside Elementary School, where she helped students make “dirt babies” — basically a homemade Chia Pet. Not only did it offer students a fun way to learn about the nature and importance of soil, Trosper enjoyed having youth later greet her as “the Dirt Baby Lady.”

 As she looks back on her time at the district, “the education’s probably what I’m most proud of,” she said.

Alongside University of Wyoming Extension, Park County Weed and Pest and local irrigation and conservation districts, the Powell district hosts clinics on how small acreage property owners can be good stewards of their land. As more people have moved into rural Park County — and as the district has found more effective ways to get the word out — attendance has surged from maybe 30 attendees to crowds of 150 to 200 folks.

“People coming in want to know, they’re interested, they want to learn,” Trosper said.

The small acreage workshop is now moving from a biennial event to an annual one that rotates between Powell and Cody.

Fundraising for government

All of the Powell-Clarks Fork Conservation District’s work is done on a tight budget.

While cemeteries, fire departments and other small branches of local government generally get their funding from property taxes, the Powell district does not, nor does it receive much funding from the county government.

Trosper said their only consistent and significant funding stream is roughly $20,000 to $30,000 that the Wyoming Department of Agriculture provides every other year.

That’s why a significant part of Trosper’s job involved finding funding — even helping to sell seedling trees. She worked to secure some sizable grants that helped local landowners replace aging septic systems to protect waterways and developed a new management plan for the Shoshone River watershed.

“Natural resource work costs money,” Trosper said, “and it’s very difficult to work, build partnerships and actually do something with producers when you don’t have much to offer them.”

Districts can ask voters for property taxes. The Meeteetse Conservation District, for example, has a voter-approved mill levy that’s expected to yield $125,000 this year; those dollars will flow into a $442,510 budget. The Powell-Clarks Fork’s budget, meanwhile, totals about $28,500.

The Powell district’s new long-range plan says it will “continue seeking possibilities of mill levy funding,” but “anybody would know that trying to sell a tax in Park County right now would not be a real wise undertaking,” said supervisor Smith.

“We’ve been able to get by” without a levy or significant county funding, Smith said, but it limits what the district can do.

Moving forward

At their Feb. 3 meeting, Park County commissioners agreed to chip in $1,000 toward this year’s small acreage workshop, which is set for March 29 at the Cody Auditorium. Commissioners, who supported the effort at half that level in the past, said they believe the workshop is valuable and pays dividends.

The district also recently relaunched its seedling sale and is offering nine different types of trees in effort to raise more funds. The 25-plant bundles go for $95 and are intended for conservation purposes, like living snow fences or wildlife habitat.

New manager Shannon Darrough told commissioners the district’s long-range plans include continued community education, seeking out new partnerships, promoting sustainable land use practices and supporting continued agricultural production.

“We would love to see all agricultural land stay in production, but we understand that that's not the trend that we’ve seen recently, and we realize that we need to support all of our landowners,” Darrough said. “In order to do that, we’re looking at offering more services.”

For example, she said the district hopes to launch a program that would help cover some of landowners’ costs for water well testing.

Darrough, who previously worked as a Powell High School ag teacher and FFA adviser, took over the manager position in mid-October and then trained with Trosper. Darrough told commissioners that she’s been enjoying the work.

“I’m ‘sucked in,’ as Ann [Trosper] would say,” Darrough said.

For more information about the Powell-Clarks Fork Conservation District — including how to order seedlings — visit pcfcd.org or call 307-271-3125.