The head of the Nature Conservancy’s Vermont chapter is stepping down after 34 years.
Sixty-five-year-old Bob Klein said Friday that he will retire in April.
The Burlington Free Press reports that the Vermont chapter’s deputy director, Emily Boedecker, will become acting director.
Klein has been director since the chapter first opened an office in Vermont in 1979.
Since then, the Nature Conservancy has purchased or helped conserve nearly 100,000 acres of land around Vermont.
The Conservancy’s land protection projects have ranged from Burt Forest, 10,000 acres around Mount Mansfield, to the 120-acre Chickering Bog, a 10,000-year-old fen in Calais.