The CLF Team

Louis Porter is CLF’s Lake Champlain Lakekeeper. Louis took a circuitous route to become Lake Champlain Lakekeeper for the Conservation Law Foundation.

Growing up as an amateur naturalist on a small farm in Vermont, Louis spent his summers on road and river trips in the Green Mountains and around the country. He then worked as a sculptor’s apprentice and as a commercial fishing deckhand in Alaska before studying biology at Arizona State University and graduating with degrees in zoology and history from the University of Washington.

Louis then began working at newspapers, starting out as a newsroom clerk at the Stamford Advocate. He spent the next decade as a reporter, covering politics and government, and returning to his home state to work and eventually lead the Vermont Press Bureau, which covers Vermont’s Statehouse and agencies for the Barre Montpelier Times-Argus and Rutland Herald.

As Lakekeeper, Louis is part of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of 200 watershed-based advocates for clean water around the world. From climate change and flood resilience to potentially dangerous blue-green algae blooms, the Lakekeeper is charged with making sure the public knows about threats to the United States’ sixth largest freshwater body, and that those threats are addressed with good science and good policy.

For more on the Lakekeeper program, visit: clf.org/lakekeeper/