At Home in the Woods: A Profile of Sarah Costlow

When you think about Johnstown, PA—a city of 18,000 in Western Pennsylvania—maybe you think about the Great Flood of 1889. In late May of that year, after a period of heavy rains, the South Fork Dam burst as the waters of the Little Conemaugh River gushed across the valley, churning up everything in its path.

Sarah Costlow, our Land Protection Director since 2021, is a Johnstown native who grew up nearby in a house tucked away in the woods. When she thinks about Johnstown it’s the majesty of autumn that comes to mind. How the leaves burnish the trees on the rolling hills surrounding the city in vivid color. Nature, you could say, was her happy place when she was growing up.

“I spent a lot of time wandering around,” she says, “picking Mayapples and using them as umbrellas and running from the spiders I was afraid of! My grandparents had a farm where I used to climb on the hay bales in the barn, catch tadpoles in the various ponds, pick blueberries, and try to pet the feral cats.” 

Outdoor experiences like these are part of the reason why she got involved in conservation work—and not only because she loved spending time in nature. “In Western PA,” she says, “our streams and rivers were what people referred to as ‘Kool-Aid orange’ from acid mine drainage since Johnstown was once a mining and steel town. I didn’t know how bad things were until I did some traveling and saw beautiful, pristine streams and rivers throughout Western Europe.”

Following high school, Sarah was determined to do something positive for the environment, and she earned degrees at Lafayette College, the American University of Paris, and Vermont Law School. What united her educational interests at each stop was a burning desire to protect nature, whether it was through environmental writing, global communication, or law and policy—and that’s what she’s been doing ever since.

With us for the past three years, Sarah has worked with willing landowners on numerous projects, including the Becker Preserve in Holland. This year alone, she has more than 20 projects underway, totaling an incredible 2,000+ acres. Each project involves extensive evaluation, documentation, and development work, and often takes between one and two years to complete. Since the founding of the Western New York Land Conservancy in 1991 the organization has protected more than 7,800 acres. That means we’re ramping up our work, and Sarah has played a crucial role in that effort.

So it was with a considerable degree of sadness that we recently learned Sarah will be returning home to Western Pennsylvania as the Vice President of Land Conservation for the Allegheny Land Trust. Though we’re thrilled that Sarah gets to take a significant step in her career, we will certainly miss her effervescent personality, kind spirit, and doggedness in saving land. As a relatively new mom to a beautiful daughter—with another child on the way!—the chance to be close to her family was too great to pass up.

Our land protection efforts will go on, of course, and we’ll continue the great work that Sarah Costlow has contributed so significantly to. Now when you think about Western Pennsylvania, you can think about all the many acres of land that Sarah will protect there. A win for the environment there is, after all, also a win for the environment here.

Maybe someday a Western Pennsylvania Wildway will connect with our own WNY Wildway? We can dream. Thank you, Sarah!