Around the Office, Fall 2010

We know that the summer heat has been relatively unbearable in some parts of the country, especially in the eastern U.S., but it’s been  positively glorious here in Missoula. A few years ago, the average daily temperature in the month of July was 97 degrees, but this year, we haven’t even hit 97 once (yet). Very few fires, very little smoke, it’s like a little slice of heaven. So we’ve been enjoying it, but that hasn’t stopped us from having an extremely productive summer as well.

Welcome

We added two more people to our field staff for the last month or so of the field season. Graham Byrd had to leave early, so Mo Essen will be stepping in to fill his rather large shoes on our Lolo Inventory project. In addition, we hired Adam West to assist with our Legacy Roads and Trails monitoring project. Adam will be in the field this September collecting pre-road removal data about vegetation conditions. We’ll be following up next year to see what types of vegetation are returning to these areas after the roads are decommissioned.

Annual Gifts Campaign

Success Is Yours: Wildlands CPR is kicking off our 9th Annual Gift Campaign on October 25th to celebrate the success You have given us.  Your annual support gives Wildlands CPR the ability to advocate for increased Legacy Roads funding, put the brakes on renegade ORV abuse, and restore our nation’s watersheds. A six-week affair, our goal is $40,000, and many of you will be receiving a letter and phone call this all to consider getting us to that goal. Every $100, $50 and $25 counts—it’s surprising how fast these amounts (with some contributors able to give more) add up! Thank You for the success you are giving us.

Thanks

A huge thank you to the B-Bar Ranch for hosting our annual board and staff retreat in June. We had an extremely productive long weekend and finished the meeting with excellent plans for new projects as well as continuing efforts. We’d also like to thank the Patagonia  Foundation for two beautiful jackets for the successful Montana Shares raffle. And finally, thanks to all of you who have made individual contributions to Wildlands CPR this summer, and to those of you who will make donations this fall, including through the annual gifts campaign.

Festival of the Book

Wildlands CPR, Humanities Montana, and the Missoula Art Museum are teaming up around the 2010 Montana Festival of the Book at the end of October to highlight the Limited Edition Set of Wildlands CPR’s conservation anthology, A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places. The anthology features some of our top writers including Annie Proulx, Peter Matthiessen, Barry Lopez, William Kittredge, Phil Condon, and more. The Limited Edition Set—which includes the leather-bound book signed by all 26 living contributors and 6 original wood engravings—is currently featured at the Missoula Art Museum in a special exhibit in their lobby gallery (the Set is now part of their permanent collection).

There will be a closing event for the Limited Edition exhibit at the Missoula Art Museum at 1 pm on Saturday October 30th, coinciding with the Festival of the Book. Claire Emery, the wood engraving artist, will speak as will Bethanie Walder, Wildlands CPR’s Executive Director. There will be refreshments, and time to see the exhibit.

We will also have two readings from the book, a small “Selected Shorts from A Road Runs Through It,” and, like NPR’s show, have known Missoulians read short selections from the book. Former Montana Congressman Pat Williams will be one of the readers, and Cherie Newman, of MT NPR’s “The Write Question,” will be the other.

If you’re in the Missoula area, please join us for this special event!