Sue Gunn, Restoation Campaign Director

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Sue has a PhD in isotope geochemistry and conducted research in igneous petrology for the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA for over a decade. Her doctorate fieldwork was conducted on the Cretaceous granites of southwestern Montana and the research for her MS was in a remote area of Baja, CA. Her undergraduate degree is in Political Science with an emphasis on constitutional law. Sue has an extensive policy background and worked for a decade in Washington DC as the director of Budget and Appropriations and later the director of the the National Parks Program for The Wilderness Society. She moved to Olympia, WA in 2006 to get closer to big wilderness and has worked on water and environmental issues. Sue is currently the Washington state representative for Wildlands CPR and the campaign coordinator for the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative. Raised in the Chicago area, at one time she worked for the Chicago Daily News as an editorial assistant and for the Second City as an improvisational comedian.

 

Sarah Peters, Legal Liaison/Staff Attorney (Oregon)

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Sarah has a JD from the University of Oregon School of Law and a BS in Environmental Science from Indiana University. Sarah graduated from UO Law with certificates in Environmental and Natural Resources Law, Public Interest Law, and Pro Bono and is a member of the State Bars of Colorado and Oregon. While in law school, Sarah worked with the Western Environmental Law Center and the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center on a variety of public lands issues, and worked part-time as a law clerk in the office of public interest attorney Marianne Dugan. Sarah also volunteered with local restoration and conservation groups, and focused her energy on increasing community activism among law students.

Tom Petersen, Development Director

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Tom has an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana and has worked as a fund raiser for not-for-profit environmental groups for 18 years. He has been with Wildlands CPR for 13 years, and was co-founder and Executive Director of a successful community garden program in North Carolina for seven years, creating funding strategies, budgets, and development plans for the organization. Tom is also a Board member of the Wild Rockies Field Institute (WRFI) and sits on the Advisory Board of Orion Magazine's Grassroots Network. In addition to working in the non-profit world, Tom is a published nature writer, and editor of the 2006 anthology on wildland roads, A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places (Johnson Books, Boulder CO).

 

Adam Rissien, Montana Off-Road Vehicle Coordinator

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Adam earned his MS in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana with an emphasis on national forest policy, which culminated in a professional paper examining restoration principles, their on-the-ground application and intersection with the Forest Service budgetary process. Prior to this, Adam spent eight years in Montana working and volunteering on numerous environmental issues, including tracking snowmobile trespass in roadless and Wilderness areas, documenting illegal ORV use in the Great Burn Proposed Wilderness Area, and serving as Chair of the Sierra Club's Bitterroot-Mission Group. Before taking the Montana ORV Coordinator position, Adam worked for the Sierra Club in Wyoming as their state lobbyist and Associate Regional Representative working on issues such as national forest planning and impacts from energy development.

Adam Switalski, Science Coordinator

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Adam, our Science Coordinator since June 2002, earned a Masters in Wildlife Ecology from Utah State University, working with John Bissonette, a renowned leader in road mitigation research.  Adam’s graduate work quantified the behavioral response of coyotes to wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park.  For the last eight years, Adam has coordinated interdisciplinary research projects on road decommissioning and fish, wildlife, and vegetation and coauthored papers in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, and Restoration Ecology.  He also has published reviews of the impacts of off-road vehicles and developed Best Management Practices for their management.  He is a Faculty Affiliate of the University of Montana’s Environmental Studies Program and sits on the Board of the Montana Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology. 

Bethanie Walder, Executive Director

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Bethanie Walder, Executive Director since 1995, has an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Duke University and a Master's in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. For her Master's degree, she completed an in-depth study of the "forest health crisis" for Hells Canyon Preservation Council (and other activists) to use to challenge forest health timber sales. Prior to working with Wildlands CPR, Bethanie spent a year working on roadless area protection for The Ecology Center in Missoula. She was a founding member of Women's Voices for the Earth, also in Missoula, serving on their steering committee from its inception until July 1997. She has been on the board of the American Lands Alliance since 1997, including several periods serving on the executive committee. Bethanie serves as a faculty affiliate for the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Montana. She also sits on the board of the North Missoula Community Development Corporation, which focuses on affordable housing and promoting livable, thriving neighborhoods within the Missoula community.

 

Cathrine Walters, Program Associate

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Cathrine earned her BS in Natural Resource Management in Wisconsin andworked as a range technician and wildlife technician inWisconsin and Idaho. She eventually landed in Missoula and joinedWildlands CPR's staff in August 2005 as their Program Associate. After ashort hiatus during the summer of 2007 to pursue her other passion, photography,she returned that fall to split her time with Wildlands CPR and shooting.

 

Board Members

The Board of Directors is a group of individuals dedicated to preserving and recovering wilderness by removing roads. They stay involved in the decision-making process through frequent fax, e-mail and phone communication regarding major issues and allocation of funds. We have one annual weekend meeting per year, plus quarterly phone conferences. Wildlands CPR's Director is responsible for day-to-day decisions, and she frequently consults with individual members of the board on specific issues. Board members can serve up to 2 consecutive 3-year terms, but then must step down for at least a year before rejoining the board.

 

Jim Furnish, President, is a consulting forester in the Washington DC area following a 34-year career with USDA Forest Service. He served as Siuslaw National Forest Supervisor in Corvallis, OR from 1992-1999, and as Deputy Chief of the 192 million acre National Forest System under Mike Dombeck for 2 1/2 years. As Siuslaw Forest Supervisor, he directed a total reformation from a timber-dominated mission to one of conservation biology under the Northwest Forest Plan, with dramatic reductions in timber harvest and road networks. As Deputy Chief, Jim was instrumental in creating the Roadless Area Conservation and Forest Planning regulations, two of the most significant and controversial in recent agency history. Jim joined the board in February 2005.

Chris Kassar, Vice President, is a wildlife biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity where she is working to defend public lands in Arizona, New Mexico and California from off-road vehicle abuse. She joined the Center in 2005 and previously worked for the Friends of the Inyo, surveying routes and conducting research on the impacts of off-road vehicles on the Inyo National Forest. Chris holds an M.S. in Wildlife Biology from Utah State University where she worked in the landscape ecology lab and completed research on the impacts that roads have on wildlife and habitat. Chris joined the Board in spring 2007.

Rebecca Lloyd, Secretary/Treasurer, is a Hydrologist and Project Leader for the Nez Perce Tribe, Idaho. She develops and manages all of the Tribe's restoration work on the Lochsa Drainage, including road decommissioning, culvert replacement, road improvement, riparian restoration, and invasive plant control. Her restoration work began in 1997 when she took a position as a technician working for the Clearwater National Forest's burgeoning road decommissioning program. During that year she also worked for the Nez Perce Tribe, which was beginning to develop its partnership with the Clearwater National Forest. She graduated in 1993 from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Environmental Science and International Studies and earned a Masters Degree in Environmental Science/ Water Resources at Indiana University in 1999. Becca joined the Board in February 2006.

Crystal Mario founded and runs Rivanna Natural Designs. After a distinguished career with such high-profile companies as AdobeSystems, Inc. and Xerox Imaging Systems, Crystal was tired of spendingher life in airports and hotel rooms.  She started Rivanna NaturalDesigns in 2001 with a simple objective: to provide safe, meaningful,and rewarding employment for recently-arrived refugees and others inour community who need a second start or an opportunity to learn newskills.  Rivanna uses sustainably harvested or reclaimed wood andrecycled glass to create the clocks, plaques, pens, and deskaccessories for sale through the company’s online store.

Cara Ritchie Nelson is a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at University of Washington's College of Forest Resources. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from The Evergreen State College, Master of Science degrees in Conservation Biology and in Forestry from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecosystem Analysis from the University of Washington. In August 2007, Cara will be moving from the Cascades to the Rockies to join the faculty at University of Montana's College of Forestry and Conservation as Assistant Professor of Restoration Ecology. Cara's research encompasses a variety of studies, organized around the central theme of the effects of fire and other large-scale disturbances on forest vegetation. In addition, Cara is continuing to pursue several long-term studies initiated during her doctoral program. She originally joined the board in November 1995, and rejoined in 2005.

Brett Paben is an attorney with WildLaw, where he asworked since graduating from the University of Oregon School of Law in2000, with his J.D. and a certificate in Environmental and NaturalResources Law. Brett also holds bachelors' degrees in InternationalAffairs and Environmental Studies from the University ofWisconsin-Madison and Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from theUniversity of Florida. Brett works on public lands, endangered speciesand anti-pollution related issues, with a particular focus on National Forests.

Susan Jane Brown is a staff attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center.  Her primary focus of litigation is federal public lands forest management, but her practice includes cases involving the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, and other land management statutes. Susan Jane also spent three years as Executive Director of the Gifford Pinchot Task Force, where she created and led a comprehensive, cohesive, and mutually beneficial collaborative strategy among environmentalists, citizens, and public officials focusing on sustainable uses of public forest lands in southwest Washington State.  She continues her involvement in collaborative working groups across the Pacific Northwest.

Photos provided by Wildlands CPR staff