Don Stuart has over 20 years of lobbying experience in the Washington, Oregon, and Idaho State Legislatures and in the U.S. Congress. He served as Executive Director for Salmon for Washington, a trade group representing commercial fishermen and fish processing firms (1990-96), Executive Director for the Washington Association of Conservation Districts, a professional association representing local governments assisting agricultural landowners (1997-2000), and Northwest Regional Director for American Farmland Trust, a national environmental organization protecting local farmland from development (2000-2011). Don was also the campaign manager and public spokesperson in the successful defense of a Washington statewide anti-commercial fishing ballot initiative (I-640) in 1995 and he ran for the U.S. Congress in Washington's First District in 1996. Don is also a former Alaska commercial salmon troll fisherman (1962-65, 1980-89), a formerly practicing Seattle trial attorney (1972-79), and was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps during the Viet Nam War (1968-72). His opinion column on fish politics appeared monthly in the Fishermen's News from 1990-96. He is the author of Barnyards and Birkenstocks: Why Farmers and Environmentalists Need Each Other, published by Washington State University Press (1914), and of The Washington Guide to Small Claims Court, published by Self-Counsel Press (1979).