Wilderness foundation continues to grow

The state of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation is “great” despite the recession, the Foundation’s new executive director, Carol Treadwell, reports — not only are volunteers keeping up with trail work, but the nonprofit’s financial progress continues to improve.

“With the strong support of our volunteers and donors, we’ve grown steadily since 1997,” she said. “The current economic landscape continues to create challenges for all, and at the Foundation we are working hard to replace dwindling federal funding.”

Volunteers organized by the Foundation completed 40 wilderness stewardship projects in 2012 — $318,620 in labor at $21 an hour.

The work included 3,586 trees cut out of trails, 1,489 yards of trail tread improvements and hundreds of acres of noxious weeds treated or pulled by hand. All told, volunteers helped maintain 176 miles of trail in the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat and Great Bear wilderness areas.

“Volunteers came from 25 states, Canada and Ireland,” Treadwell said, noting that the Foundation is well known in the worldwide outdoor recreation community.

Twenty-one of last year’s projects were open to the public, including six focused on weeds and two with the Maryland-based American Hiking Society. The Sierra Club brought in 19 people who were divided into two groups, volunteers arrived from Shreiner University in Texas, and three local youth-at-risk groups sent volunteers — Montana Academy, Sinopah House and Building Bridges.

“One trail hadn’t been cleared in about 10 years,” Treadwell said. “A group of friends who volunteered together cleared five miles of the Red Plume Mountain Trail in one week.”

The Foundation took in about $235,000 in donations, fundraisers, grants and awards, merchandise sales and investments last year, but all the revenue has tended to go into trail work every year, said Treadwell, who was hired by the Foundation last summer.

“We made history this year,” she said. “The board in January voted to create an endowment. The fund will be used to address the ups and downs in annual budgets and potential future cutbacks by the government.”

A full project schedule for this year will not be available until March 1, but 12 whitebark pine monitoring projects are planned, Treadwell said. Monitors of the “keystone species” will return to sites originally studied in the 1980s by Forest Service research ecologist Robert Keane, who will train the volunteers.

The Foundation’s Wilderness Speakers Series continues this year with three talks about wilderness stewardship, conservation and recreation. Research biologist Kate Kendall will talk about grizzly bears on Feb. 21; local author Matt Holloway will talk about “The Wild and the Not-Wild: A Discussion of Wilderness in Today’s Mind” on March 14; and former Glacier National Park ranger Charlie Logan will talk about “Recollections of a Rocky Mountain Ranger” on April 11. The talks will be held in Flathead Valley Community College’s Arts and Technology Building from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

The Foundation will also host MountainFilm on Tour, featuring a selection of outdoor adventure films from the MountainFilm festival in Telluride, Colo., at the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish on March 21. Tickets are $12 in advance at www.bmwf.org or by calling 387-3822 starting March 5 or $15 at the door.

Pints night fundraisers will take place at the Tamarack Brewery in Lakeside with the Montana Wilderness Association on May 1 and at the new Desert Mountain Brewery in Columbia Falls on May 17.