I don’t have a green building badge. I have a mission… to design homes that allow wildlife to keep theirs, too – through conservation-based design.
This work didn’t come from a course. It came from the woods. And that doesn’t make my work any less valid.
–
I’ve been asked more times than I can count if I’m affiliated with LEED, the Living Building Challenge, or Passive House. I get it. People are trying to make sense of what I do. Conservation-based home design isn’t mainstream—yet.
So the assumption is: She must be trained in something I’ve heard of.
But I’m not.
Not because I couldn’t be. Not because I don’t care about sustainability.
But because what I do doesn’t fully fit those systems.
And I no longer force myself to fit systems that weren’t built for what I’m here to do.
Certifications are useful for what they measure. But they don’t measure what I care most about: habitat loss, species displacement, and the ripple effect of every material choice on the non-human world.
LEED can tell you how energy-efficient your windows are.
It can’t tell you what species were displaced to harvest the wood used in your floor.
Living Building Challenge can track water use.
But it doesn’t ask whether that “sustainable” material came from a keystone species’ nesting site.
The frameworks weren’t made to measure the kind of harm I’m trying to prevent.
So I had to build a new one.
But people still sometimes assume that if I work with nature, I must be following the same track as LEED or the Living Building Challenge. That I must be certified, or trained, or teaching the same things.. with an added twist.
That’s not my path. I’m not here to build on LEED or LBC or take their work “a step further.” That’s not what this is. I’m not trying to improve those systems. I’m building something that starts from a different origin entirely.
It’s not my place to insert myself into their frameworks or assume I need to affiliate with them. Their goals are broader; balancing human needs, comfort, and environmental metrics.
My work is narrower on purpose. It sacrifices breadth for focus. Wildlife is the priority.
Everything else adjusts beneath it.
That clarity is the expertise I bring. Come to me if you want to make home choices that protect and align with wildlife, not balance that with other agendas. We’ll go as far as you want to take it, and you’ll walk away with the real understanding to make informed, aligned decisions. That’s what I offer.
And I don’t need to fill my head with what LEED or LBC are teaching. Honestly? It would muddy my thinking. There are enough people pushing that message. I’m here to keep a clear head – for wildlife.
The Truth About My Work in Conservation-Based Design
This isn’t a rebellion against green building standards. (We need all of them.)
I’m not designing for certifications. I’m designing for the animals no one sees—
the ones whose habitats are turned into building sites, whose food webs are disrupted by “green” homes, whose silence goes unnoticed in eco-friendly rooms.
Wildlifeel at Home is not an extension of LEED.
It’s an entirely different lens.
And it has to be—because the world I’m designing for has no voice in the systems that currently define “eco-friendly.”
What This Means for You
If you’ve ever felt like the standard sustainability checklist doesn’t go deep enough…
>If you care not just about how your home performs, but what it cost the Earth in terms of habitat, presence, and wildness—
Then you’re in the right place.
My work doesn’t come with a certification plaque.
It comes with a conservation cause, a material audit, and a trail of design decisions made for the sake of all species.
That’s what makes a home sustainable in my eyes.
We don’t need to keep squeezing deep work into shallow systems.
We need to build new frameworks that fit the future we want to protect.
That’s what conservation-based home design is for.
