The new head of Northwest Indiana's oldest environmental group wants more people to take part in the work she loves.

“I come with kind of a cheerleading attitude,” said Natalie Johnson, who recently was appointed executive director of Save the Dunes. “I want to bring more people into the dunes and into Save the Dunes.”

Johnson, 30, has worked for the past four years as Northwest Indiana's coordinator for the Urban Waters Partnership, a program in 19 sites across the country organized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

She starts her Save the Dunes job in January. Her predecessor, Nicole Barker, was executive director for six years before taking a job with the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District.

Save the Dunes, based in Michigan City, was founded in 1952 to advocate for a national park in the Indiana dunes. After Congress created the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966, Save the Dunes branched out into broader environmental issues in Northwest Indiana.

Johnson, who grew up in the St. Louis metropolitan area, settled early on her life's work.

“I knew exactly what I wanted to do since the fifth grade,” she said. “I was always going outside, getting muddy, crawling through creeks.”

After earning bachelor's degrees in biology and secondary education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Johnson worked with an environmental partnership in the St. Louis area and then for the Missouri Department of Conservation before coming to Northwest Indiana with the Urban Waters Partnership. This year, she received her master's degree in natural resources and environmental sciences from the University of Illinois.

Johnson's work with the partnership introduced her to Northwest Indiana — and to Save the Dunes, where she worked in the office for the first two years.

“I credit Save the Dunes as the organization that brought me to Northwest Indiana,” she said. “They helped teach me the landscape.”

For the past two years, she has been based at the Purdue University Northwest campus in Hammond.

At Urban Waters Partnership, she worked with environmental organizations, community groups and government agencies on projects that included making homeowners more aware of good septic system maintenance practices to reduce water pollution; helping to develop Indiana's first handicapped-accessible canoe and kayak launch in Michigan City; and helping agencies apply for water-related grants.

She looks forward to working with what she calls Save the Dunes' “absolutely phenomenal and dedicated” staff and board members. She wants people to know that working for the environment starts at home — for example, by planting native plant species in backyards and by maintaining septic systems.

“We want to engage neighbors, so they're talking to other neighbors,” she said. “We want to cultivate good stewardship all over the place.”

Save the Dunes is still involved in the national park. In 2015, it bought a 100-acre parcel in Hobart that it plans to donate as part of the park's Hobart Prairie Grove.

“It's a very fragmented national park,” Johnson said. “We're always looking to bridge natural areas.”

Save the Dunes also has focused on eradicating invasive plants such as phragmites, the tall grassy plants with feathery tops that can grow more than 10 feet tall in wetlands, taking over the landscape and crowding out native plants.

In the coming year, Save the Dunes will begin working with Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History to create a plan for dealing with climate change.

“Save the Dunes has the potential to make a very positive impact on Northwest Indiana,” Johnson said. “We can do things by being open and working with each other. I want to show people that the environment affects us all.”

Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.