Alex Maher: Life in Service

Alex Maher is the CEO of Live Water Properties, helping clients buy and/or sell exquisite properties in both the West and the Southeast. But thirty years ago, he was fresh out of college, an Alabama fisherman drawn to Wyoming by the promise of trout streams. Maher found work in a Jackson fly shop, working retail and teaching fishing and entomology clinics, but watching guides nearing burnout come into the shop at the end of the season convinced him that life wasn’t for him. 

Today, Maher’s life is a spiritually driven one, well rooted in the practicalities of land sales and management, but lived in accordance with a very present faith. Maher says, “I believe there's a reason God has directed me to build skills with passion, and when I see the opportunity to help others with the skills I'm building, that feels like the Holy Spirit acting within me.” If that seems like a big charge, it is. But over three decades it’s had a big effect on Maher and his efforts in support of conservation.

Thinking back, Maher remembers the pull of the West’s vast public lands. “Growing up in Alabama, we were either a member of a hunting club, or you were out on the Mobile Bay or the Gulf. Out here, we're blessed with the abundance of public land for every type of pursuit you can think of: waterfowl, upland bird, big game. It’s a great privilege, properly reflected in the Pittman-Robertson Act, with the United States conservation funding model.”

Given that land is the foundation of both his business and his conservation ethic, perhaps Maher thinks more deeply about conservation than some. But he says land helps us all with a sense of our place in life. Noting that he is not someone happy in cities, Maher believes wild land and wildlife provide us with a sense of calm, and for those who are happy in cities, open space still offers places to recharge, a scientifically proven therapeutic answer to the stressors that can come with life in close quarters. He’s a public land advocate who also says, “Private landowners are the cornerstone of conservation in the country, and as some of their lands are sold off in subdivisions, we've got more of an urgent call for conservation, in my opinion. As we sit in a lot of land markets, we might have a fifty-year view. Some of us talk about a hundred-year view.”

That hundred-year view is sorely needed in America generally, and in conservation specifically. It’s one Maher tries to offer to his clients as they look to maximize their own properties, and one Ducks Unlimited offers in the conservation, restoration, and management of wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl. That’s just one reason Maher looks to Ducks Unlimited for assistance when he’s helping clients find methods to improve their habitat on their properties. Just as Maher feels called by a power beyond comprehension to implement practical benefits on this earthly plane, he sees Ducks Unlimited meeting a requirement, the scope of which is “hard for any one of us to keep perspective on, so an organization with that level of resources is necessary. Stewardship has just improved dramatically over all these different regions. Groups like Ducks Unlimited are at the forefront of that. They have the science staff, and they have the lobbying staff, and those things converge for conservation stewardship on a continent-wide level.”

Perspective is important to Alex Maher. He came to Wyoming to fish and stayed to build a life. Part of that life is waterfowling “which can be brutal in the winter. I used to fight the winter, so to speak; now I really enjoy the weather with upland bird hunting, and the spectacular waterfowl hunting we have out here.” That change of perspective is reflective of his overall positive outlook, reflecting his mandate to look for opportunities to assist, to improve, to better himself and the people around him. Of that instinct, he says, “I don't think we can realistically claim all the wonderful, generous thoughts that come through our mind either. I think we're directed at some level and the key for me is to be aware enough to recognize that and then act on it to help somebody in that time and space.”

With much of Maher’s own ranch already in conservation easement, and in the process of commencing a Ducks Unlimited project there, that perspective may be a little easier to gain for Maher. He says the organization immediately offered value to him as a landowner, bringing a depth of knowledge to his vision that would be impossible to replace, “For a perspective that large, and migration areas that are so spread out and diverse, being a part of a project is wonderful.” The truth is, for a perspective that large and migration areas that are so spread out and diverse, the more people that are part of a project, the more wonderful it will be.