Prior to starting Native Range Ecological, Clay Frazer and Dan Fuhs worked together for ten years building one of Wisconsin’s most reputable ecological consulting and restoration businesses. Clay and Dan started NRE in the fall of 2022 with a single guiding principle in mind; “Truly sustainable restoration designs, specifications, and ecological restoration plans can only come from those who have actually done the work”.

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Clay and Dan have paid their dues in this business, and they have plenty of dirt under their nails. They have each built their careers and knowledge through hands-on, boots-on-the-ground land management and ecological restoration experiences. They have been on the front lines of hundreds of restoration projects and have worn many different hats on a wide variety of restoration project types in the upper Midwest.

 

Managing a small ecological consulting business means more than just offering a higher level of responsiveness and customer service than large engineering-based firms. It also means getting out of the office and rolling up your sleeves in the field whenever you get the chance. This keeps field skills sharp and lends itself to restoration plans, specifications, and designs that are more practical, realistic, pragmatic, straightforward, and economical for our clients. Truly viable and sustainable restoration plans are written by those who have actually been in the trenches and done the work they are describing on paper. This seems intuitive, but in today’s world, larger firms tend to “replicate and boiler-plate” their plans and specifications, and restoration plan authors rarely have a solid background in the implementation, management, and monitoring of complex ecological restoration projects.