Jason Hayes

Director of Environmental Policy, Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Located in Midland, MI and founded in 1987, the Mackinac Center is a nonpartisan research and educational institute that is dedicated to advancing liberty and opportunity for all people through research and education.

The Environmental Policy Initiative at the Mackinac Center focuses on improving the lives of Michigan’s residents by first working to understand Michigan’s unique natural features, and then promoting policies that will balancing the state’s environmental health and economic vigor.

Hayes has worked and studied across North America, as a backcountry ranger in British Columbia’s provincial parks, a forester in British Columbia’s northern Boreal Forest, with the Fraser Institute researching National Parks management and grizzly bear biology, and then doing energy and environmental policy research and communications with the energy industry in both Canada and the U.S. Hayes transitioned to the Mackinac Center to head up its Environmental Policy Initiative in July 2016.

Hayes holds a Master of Environmental Design (Environmental Science) degree from the University of Calgary, a B.Sc. in Natural Resource Conservation from the University of British Columbia and a Technical Diploma in Renewable Resource Management from Selkirk College. He also serves as adjunct faculty at Northwood University, where he teaches Environmental Science.