Toddi Steelman is proud to be a coal miner’s daughter.
“I grew up in a small coal-mining town in northern West Virginia and spent all of my time outside,” Steelman says. “We were definitely free-range kids.”
Steelman’s father was an avid hunter and fisher, and she often accompanied him to the woods and streams near their home. At some point, she noticed that the waters had become polluted from acid mine drainage. “I realized that yes, this place is beautiful, but it’s also been damaged by the legacy of coal mining,” she says.
But making that connection didn’t sour Steelman on the coal-mining history of her native state. Instead, it became the core of her conservation philosophy.
“You develop an appreciation for the industry that puts a roof over your head, while realizing it can also have pernicious consequences—environmentally and socially,” Steelman says. “It gave me a healthy appreciation for why you can’t only think about ecological values—you have to think about economic and social values as well. Otherwise, you end up finding solutions that are unsustainable.”
She believes we’re all beneficiaries of an economy fueled by coal, but that it doesn’t have to be that way now. “And part of that is considering how to support communities that have historically been dependent on natural resources—for livelihoods, recreation, and more,” says Steelman.
Her passion for nature and her innate understanding of how communities exist on the land have been a driving force in her conservation career. As a social scientist, Steelman studied wildfires and how communities respond to them. In 2000, when she began focusing on wildfires, they were considered an emerging threat. Today, due in part to climate change, they’re an increasingly persistent threat to communities around the world.
