Around the Office, Fall Equinox 2011

Summer’s winding down, our annual gifts campaign is revving up, and we’ve got all sorts of projects and campaigns moving full steam ahead. The end of the summer brought a spate of fires to western Montana (and lots of other places, too). Hopefully the first really cool weather of the fall will hit by the time you read this, and the fires will already be history.

Summer field season
A huge thanks to our 2011 summer field crew for helping us with the second year of our Legacy Roads and Trails monitoring program. Abby and Cody did a fantastic job and put us ahead of schedule with the amount of data entry they’ve already completed. Abby has already finished her field work, and Cody is continuing through the end of September to help us out with some later season photo data collection. Thanks, too to our two summer interns, Alexander Walder and Emily Koekkoek. Emily worked on several projects for Wildlands CPR’s Staff Attorney/Legal Liaison Sarah Peters in Eugene, OR,  including a package of materials to help us try to fend off attacks on the Clean Water Act. Alex researched and wrote a literature review regarding the ecological effects of roads on snakes (see Biblio Notes in this issue). And in case you noticed that he has the same last name as our Executive Director, it’s not a coincidence. He’s Bethanie’s nephew, and he is just starting his senior year at South Plantation High School in Plantation, Florida.

Annual Gifts Campaign: Strength in Numbers
Thanks to all of you who have already donated to our Strength in Numbers campaign. We completely revamped our annual gifts campaign this year – and we hope you like the new approach as much as we do. First, we asked our board and 30 of our top donors to help us create a matching fund, and they delivered – to the tune of $20,000! We can’t thank them enough for creating the match. But that’s not all. After creating the fund, we then asked you, our members and subscribers, to help match it. By the time you receive this, we’ll be almost through our four week campaign. If you haven’t donated yet, please do, so we can meet the match. If you have already donated, thanks so much! This is it for our annual fundraiser, so if you usually give once a year, now is the time!!! We look forward to your continued support.

Thanks!
In addition to the amazing support from our Strength in Numbers campaign, we also want to thank the Maki, Mountaineers and Norcross Foundations for their continued support for our work!