Bernie Barlow
Working to find balance between industry and land conservation in a state like Wyoming is a tough job to tackle, but if anyone can help to find the balance, it’s Bernadette Barlow. Bernadette has got gumption. She’s a straight shooter who will tell you like it is all the while making you smile about it. Perhaps that is why she has been so successful with her work on the Powder River Basin Resource Council (PRBRC), an organization which she and her husband Bill, who has since passed, created over thirty years ago to help create regulations on mining in order to protect ranches and farms.
Upon first speaking with Barlow you notice a few things. First, she has got energy to boot- it’s contagious. And second, she’s got a great French accent, which immediately makes you wonder how Barlow ended up on a ranch outside of Gillette, Wyoming.
Bernadette grew up in Cambodia and graduated with a law degree from the Cambodian branch of the University of Paris. She ended up in Wyoming after meeting her husband, Bill, who was doing work in Cambodia as part of a college exchange program. In 1963 Bill convinced Bernadette to visit Wyoming and eight days after arriving, she and Bill were married. Although it caused quite a stir at the time, it was clearly a great fit. From the get go they worked as a team to raise their children, work the ranch and protect the land.
From the time that Bernadette arrived on the 18,000 acre ranch, she worked. She loves the land and air and wants to protect it, saying her connection to the earth “is in her blood.” Love of the land has given her the tenacity to continue to fight for responsible energy development through the PRBRC. She says it takes courage, something she feels she had help finding. “I was married to a man who had courage and that gave me courage. I was raised in a society where women don’t have much of a voice, so I never had a real chance until I married my husband.” She also feels she gained courage from her mother who she describes as “very strong, brilliant and always working for the underdog.”
Courage and gumption have taken Barlow and her cause a long way. She finished a term as chair of the Powder River Basin Resource Council in 2005 and currently is on the board of the Western Organization of Resource Council. She’s spoken to tribes in the region about the impacts of coal bed methane on the basin. And in February 2005, she and fellow members of the Powder River Basin Resource Council celebrated the passage of a bill to help surface landowners, the Wyoming "split-estate" statute.
A leader for conservation issues, when asked what qualities she thought determined a strong leader she quickly answers, someone you can trust, someone who has vision and can think outside the box and has the courage to lead. She is also not slow to point out the need for compromise. “If you give people some say about an issue, if they have some input, then people are more likely to do what is right.” Do women have a knack for compromise? Barlow thinks so. “Women have had to raise children. They learn to listen to a child’s point of view about a situation. They teach their own children what compromise looks like.”
When asked her greatest accomplishment Bernadette says she is extremely proud of her three children, Eric, Michele and Nicole. “They work hard and they have very strong moral values.”
Barlow’s work in conservation is a close second, but it also brings her greatest challenge. “Working with leaders who may not see the value of the land and the damage that is being done is difficult.” But Bernadette is a tenacious leader. “For me, protecting the resources that I was lucky enough to have is important. I want to honor the generations that made it possible for me to enjoy this land.”
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