Wilderness foundation names new director

The Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation has a new executive director. Carol Treadwell has been at the helm for about a month now. She replaces Keagan Zoellner, who will stay on in a part-time development director position.

Treadwell grew up in Minnesota, taught college-level geology, geomorphology and environmental science at universities in New York and Vermont. She has a doctorate in geology from the University of New Mexico.

Most recently, she was the executive director of the Ausable River Association, in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York.

After some research, Treadwell and her husband, John Steitz, decided to sell their home in New York’s Lake Placid and move to Whitefish. Steitz is a civil engineer but most recently was a ski instructor on Big Mountain. It wasn’t until after the move that Treadwell applied for the Wilderness Foundation position.

Treadwell was the only employee of the Ausable River Association. She wrote her own grant applications, did her own fundraising and completed projects. The Ausable River is considered a top-notch trout stream inside the Adirondack Park. The Wilderness Foundation’s mission is to provide trail access, stewardship and noxious weed removal in the Bob, as well as instill wilderness values in the volunteers who make the organization work.

In 2010, for example, 400 volunteers helped the organization complete 47 projects. The labor was worth an estimated $330,000.

“I don’t see the central core of the organization changing,” she said in an interview last week.

The challenges come with funding, Treadwell noted — available federal money is shrinking each year.

“We’ll have to find other funding sources,” she noted.

The money will likely come from the private sector through more outreach. Treadwell said one plan is to start an endowment fund. Next summer, potential donors will be escorted on a wilderness excursion in the Bob to show them what it’s all about. Treadwell is an avid hiker herself.

“I’m honored to be offered the opportunity to lead an organization that does such important work,” she said. “I’m impressed by the quality of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation and its wilderness values, and I’m looking forward to being a part of important decisions made by such an impressive organization.”