| Adopt-A-Stream Foundation |
The Foundation provided $4000 to conduct a 2-day “Rediscovery Environmental Educators Institute” in May 2008 and again in July. Our funds would go towards contracting with Thom Henley, a highly regarded trainer of environmental educators on how to teach youth to appreciate the environment. This will be an accredited training (Western WA Univ. and the WA Science Teachers Association.) opportunity during which they hope to train 80 educators in the skills necessary to teach their students to become stewards of the environment. This project will spread the word much more widely than a typical class and will give teachers hands-on training on how to teach their students, not simply reading and lectures. |
$4,000 |
| American Whitewater Affiliation |
The Foundation provided $3000 to support the coalition’s Condit Dam Removal Campaign. These funds would specifically go towards their campaign to stop a plan by Klickitat County to undermine the dam removal efforts. This will include the development of outreach and education materials including high-quality dam removal fact sheets, a web page and power point presentation aimed at building public support in Klickitat County for Condit Dam removal. In addition, they will be hosting community meetings to provide education on the benefits of a restored river. This dam has been slated for removal for some years now. With the removal of this dam, the only obstacle to fish passage between the upper White Salmon would be the Bonneville dam, which means survival of salmon and other species would be high relative to many other potential projects. |
$3,000 |
| American Wildlands |
The Foundation provided $1000 to help support initial wildlife surveys along the highway 2 corridor between Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness and other wild areas to the south. This work would hopefully inform them of where to conduct more extensive and sophisticated surveys and eventually lead to being able to make a case to state and local elected officials and the state highway department as to placement of wildlife crossing structures along this increasingly busy highway and rail line which would be most effective in maintaining continuity of wildlife migration corridors. This is similar in nature to crossings that were eventually built to the north in Banff National Park and indeed to highly developed and agreed to plans along the I-90 corridor through the Cascades. This is part of the “Yellowstone to Yukon” corridor which has been a long-lived effort to provide wildlife viability along much of the northern Rockies. |
$1,000 |
| Audubon Washington |
The Foundation provided $3000 to purchase educational materials needed to begin operations at their new Seward Park Environmental & Audubon Center. Then Center is a partnership between Seattle Parks & Rec. and Audubon WA to renovate a historic building and turn it into an environmental education center which will engage both children and adults in citizen science and land stewardship. Within a few years after opening, they hope to engage 10,000 to 12,000 people annually through approximately 300 programs. The project that will engage a lot of people, virtually all of whom live in the “back yard” of Foundation stakeholders, in developing good environmental stewardship. |
$3,000 |
| Bark |
The Foundation provided $3500 for consulting services to draft a restoration-based alternative Travel Plan for the Mt. Hood National Forest. Their alternative will prioritize recreation, clean water and wildlife above destructive logging, road building and motorized vehicle abuse. Although all national forests are undergoing this travel management planning, it appears that Mt. Hood NF is one of the first in our region to reach this stage and they want to set an example. This project may set a precedent and help regionally as our other NW forests engage in their own planning |
$3,500 |
| BC Nature |
The Foundation provided $1000 to initiate the first year of their Wildlife Tree Stewardship Program within the Okanogan-Similkameen. This is a volunteer program to monitor the nesting activities of priority at-risk birds in the region, including the several owl and woodpecker species. Their goal is to create and coordinate a network of community stewards and to conserve wildlife tree habitats through volunteer monitoring, landowner agreements and community education in the South Okanogan (BC) and Similkameen valleys. Foundation funds would be utilized to help coordinate the project including recruiting volunteers, conducting presentations and training workshops and leasing with regional stakeholders and area managers and to purchase needed equipment. |
$1,000 |
| Big Bend Resource Conservation and Development Council |
The Foundation provided $3000 to produce an interpretive self-guided free-of-charge map for public use along the 150 miles long Coulee Corridor National Scenic Byway between Othello and Omak in eastern WA. Though their long range plan is to produce a series of maps, this one will describe historic and prehistoric sites along the corridor. The project sends a positive message on the value of preserving these sites. |
$3,000 |
| Burke Museum Association |
The Foundation provided $5000 to help produce one of three new exhibits of conservation photography, each of which will be shown at the Burke and then toured to museums throughout the U.S. and Canada. The Foundation chose to specifically support: “The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World.” Funding provided from the Carl Skoog Memorial Fund. |
$5000 |
| Columbia Riverkeeper |
The Foundation provided $4500 to help them survey for heavy metals concentrations in freshwater clams living in effluent plumes of two major industrial polluters on the Columbia River. Due in part to work the Foundation supported on 2006 to identify where some of these plumes were occurring, they now propose to test the clams to prove they are actually accumulating the discharged toxins. They would also survey immediately upstream of the plumes to show evidence of the differences. This bioaccumulation of heavy metals, though many agree is likely to be occurring, has not previously been clearly demonstrated on the Columbia. The eventual intent of this group is to reduce toxic discharges into the Columbia and to provide impetus for more comprehensive state and federal studies to identify and control other sources. |
$4,500 |
| Conservation Northwest |
The Foundation provided $4300 to support a significant part of a project to help obliterate and restore 1.23 miles of road along the Wenatchee River near Lake Wenatchee in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. This would be accomplished in cooperation with the Forest Service as part of the Natapoc Ridge Restoration Project and would include a number of volunteer hours as part of the effort. Some of the GSC members were familiar with the greater Natapoc Ridge project and some of the individuals involved with this specific segment. Conservation Northwest (CNW) is a fairly large and well-known state-wide group but this seems to be a project that expands their usual scope of effort. It is important to restore the riparian corridor along this part of the Wenatchee River and the Natapoc project is somewhat of an example project on this Forest. |
$4,300 |
| Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition |
The Foundation provided $5000 to coordinate the development, printing and distribution of a map representing the current amenities of the Green-Duwamish watershed. The map would provide an outreach and public education tool to illustrate the connectivity between urban communities and the natural environment and include historic sites, urban restoration areas, neighborhoods, transportation links, especially biking, walking and water trail uses and other points of interest. The map would be provided free and would also be used as part of their visioning process for the watershed. This project has impressive public support and it would support salmon habitat creation and public recreation in a low income and minority community which has been heavily impacted by industrial development. |
$5,000 |
| EarthCorps |
The Foundation provided $1500 to support camping equipment purchases, tools, food and other project supplies for use by 110 youth and young adults implementing a service project focused on trail construction and invasive plant removal in the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River. This organization engages youth through hands-on experience with stewardship projects and promotes environmental stewardship and education. The Mountaineers Foundation has long supported a variety of conservation efforts on the Mid Fork from land acquisition to planning and stewardship projects. |
$1,500
|
| EarthCorps |
The Foundation provided $2715 to pilot an intern-led camping and service trip in North Cascades National Park as part if its “Parks Corps” urban youth forestry project. Urban youth, who rarely get an opportunity to experience and work in a natural environment, would spend 3 days and 2 nights in the park on a service trip, experiencing a mature forested ecosystem. Earth Corps intends to tie this back through further service programs to their greater goals of building support for urban reforestation projects in Seattle area parks. |
$2,715 |
| Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) |
The Foundation provided $3135 to replace antiquated hardware and software used to publish their quarterly award-winning periodical “Forest Magazine”. Their current system crashes regularly and has become almost unworkable. This is a widely distributed magazine (all 50 states, Europe, Japan & Canada) and is an important public education tool. The magazine covers a wide range of subjects and issues related to forest conservation. |
$3,135 |
| Friends of Pierce County |
The Foundation provided $3560 for student supplies to make environmental posters, field books to note their observations, water sampling kits, planting tools and plants for 4th and 5th grade students to plant at an ongoing restoration site on Crescent Creek in Pierce Co. This is an expansion of a project started last year where they secured a number of grants to help restore salmon habitat along the bank and to build observation decks. This project involves both education and a community restoration project and builds on a similar neighboring past project. In addition, it is local to many of The Foundation’s stakeholders. |
$3,560 |
| Issaquah Alps Trails Club |
The Foundation provided an initial $1000 towards the creation of a statue of Harvey Manning to be placed in Issaquah in proximity to Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. The IATC feels this is a well-deserved memorial for the founder of Issaquah Alps as well as a well known local conservationist and author. |
$1,000 |
| Klamath-Siskiyou Wildland Center |
The Foundation provided $2000 towards their Wild Rogue Wilderness campaign which advocates for permanent protection of the Zane Gray, Whiskey Creek and Grave’s Creek roadless areas of the lower Rogue River Basin. The Proposal noted that the banks of the lower Rogue are protected under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act but that much of the upland area is currently at risk from old-growth logging (a couple of specific projects were referenced). While there is currently a Forest Service Wilderness to the west, this campaign would be on BLM land. |
$2,000 |
| Mattole Restoration Council |
The Foundation provided $3000 to support the participation of an independent technical review team in their final deliberations with Pacific Lumber Company’s watershed analysis for its holdings in the Mattole River watershed. The Mountaineers Foundation has supported this organization over the last couple of years in its efforts and these negotiations are the culmination of those efforts. Though The Foundation normally does not fund ongoing efforts over more than 2 or 3 years, this is a critical juncture. |
$3,000 |
| McCall Outdoor Science School, University of Idaho |
The Foundation provided $3000 to help the Science School deliver an outreach program specially tailored to the McCall-Donnelly High School to deliver a hands-on community-based watershed science program culminating in practical research than can be used to protect local resources. The project would focus on 5 months of study and student data collection at nearby Shiner Creek which the local Water Advisory Board believes may be polluted due to upstream development. The students would present their findings both at their school science fair and a McCall Community forum which will include the McCall Municipal Golf Course, the Dept. of Water Quality, the aforementioned advisory group and the City Planning Board. The ultimate goal of the project is to empower high school students as citizen scientists to affect change in their community. This project is an extended study which would enable the students to really absorb the knowledge obtained and would include an aspect of advocacy and empower them by showing them how their own work could be used to influence public policy |
$3,000 |
| Mid-Columbia Fisheries Enhancement Group |
The Foundation provided $2000 to help fund their efforts in working with the Forest Service to restore floodplain function and instream habitat along a 190 acre area along the Cle Elum and Cooper Rivers. The project will create new camping areas away from the active floodplain which is being heavily degraded by current uncontrolled use, and will restore 10 acres of degraded soils. They will combine the on-the-ground efforts with an intensive camper education program. This area is very local to The Foundation’s stakeholders, including The Mountaineers, and the heavy use it receives which will likely increase as the Suncadia and other development efforts on relatively nearby private lands mature. |
$2,000 |
| The Mountaineers |
South Sound Enviromental Issues Course |
$1,000 |
| The Mountaineers |
Operating funds for the Mountaineers Library |
$20,192 |
| The Mountaineers |
Tacoma Hikes for At-Risk Kids (HARK) program. Materials and equipment storage. |
$600 |
| Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust |
The Foundation provided $5000 to support a community effort to survey and remove invasive weeds from the entire Middle Fork Snoqualmie Valley. The grant will fund crew leaders and supplies for 4 volunteer work parties, two days of conservation corps crews as well as surveys by staff and volunteers of both roads and trails. They will match funds granted by the Forest Service and WA Dept. of Natural Resources. Over the years, the Mountaineers Foundation has funded a number of projects this organization and its partners have organized including land acquisitions, river cleanups and similar invasive weed eradication efforts in the Mid Fork Valley. Protection and improvement of conditions in the Mid Fork Valley has been relatively high-profile effort for quite some time and our own contribution significant. |
$5,000 |
| Northwest Wilderness & Parks Conference |
The Foundation provided $5000 to support their 2008 Wilderness Conference to be held at The Mountaineers Club in April 2008. Past conferences, which are held every 2-3 years and organized by a variety of organizations and individuals and which the Foundation has supported in the past, typically attracts hundreds of people over the course of 3 days. Several members of the GSC and the Foundation Board have participated in past conferences and have found them excellent opportunities to learn, network with activists, and engage in a wide variety of Wilderness related topics. Of particular interest this year is the effort the NWWPC plans to make to engage the general public by bringing in a big-name speaker to kick off the event. |
$5,000 |
| Oregon Natural Desert Association |
The Foundation provided $1000 to support their Oregon Desert Restoration and Outreach Program which engages volunteers in field projects that restore fish and wildlife habitat throughout Oregon’s High Desert. ONDA augments any special land designation (such as Wilderness) by educating volunteers about the importance of protecting desert wildlands, including from human impacts and they also provide participants the opportunity to help heal those lands through volunteer restoration trips. Basically, this group, among other things, removes old barbed wire fences from places such as Steen’s Mountain. Since the more easily reached terrain has already been dealt with, they are now working in the harder-to-reach backcountry. |
$1,000 |
| Pacific Rivers Council |
The Foundation provided $3000 to support a 1-day “Forest Roads and Watersheds Symposium” to be held in Tacoma in March of 2008. The conference is intended to bolster public and policymaker understanding of the need for significantly increased federal funding for road-related watershed restoration work in our national forests. They expect 200-250 participants from all over the Northwest and will specifically target upper-level political leaders and their advisors as both the primary audience and key participants. They intend to use science, agency staff and conservation interests in making their presentations and hope to further engage policy makers in discussion during and after the conference and increase their awareness of the need to address priority threats from forest roads to water quality and aquatic species in Oregon and Washington in particular. Work is increasingly being done in this state on this subject and the opportunity presented by monies made available in current appropriations budgets in Congress and the Puget Sound Initiative in this state raises the visibility of these kinds of discussions. |
$3,000 |
| Payette Land Trust |
The Foundation provided $2000 to help develop GIS mapping of their existing conservation easements and land locations of ecological/riparian corridors of high interest in PLT’s region. They will also include the locations of other land trust areas in order to be better able to visualize the entire landscape. This will enable them to evaluate and prioritize their efforts and to print out detailed maps with the information they need in their evaluations. This type of information is critical in today’s world for just the type of work this organization does and the information they will develop will really help them to expand their vision and their effectiveness. |
$2,000 |
| Pratt Museum |
The Foundation provided $4000 to produce a tri-fold color brochure to help promote its message of environmental and community stewardship to larger and more diverse audiences. The Pratt Museum is the only natural history museum in the 25,600 square mile area of the Kenai Peninsula and serves over 30,000 visitors annually both Alaskans and visitors from around the world. About 3500 students participate in their educational programs every year. |
$4,000 |
| Salmon River Restoration Council |
The Foundation provided $2200 towards installation of a solar energy system for their off-grid Watershed Center in order to reduce their dependence on a diesel generator for daily operations. Their center is right in the middle of the watershed they’re working to protect. This is a good demonstration project that will also reduce the emissions of an organization’s facility that is doing other good environmental work |
$2,200 |
| Samish Indian Nation |
The Foundation provided $4535 to help hire a crew for the removal of a very heavy and serious ivy infestation on about 2 acres on Weaverling Spit. The spit is on Fidalgo Bay and this is part of a long-term project to restore the native forest plant community and wildlife habitat that was once used by the native people. The ivy is reported to be thick and extensive that it is threatening native Madrona, Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar and big Leaf Maple. In addition, the extent of the infestation is such that a volunteer effort alone would unlikely be able to deal with the problem effectively. as to be more than a volunteer effort alone would likely be able to deal with effectively and is threatening native Madrona, Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar and Big Leaf Maple. The whole project includes over 2000 feet of shoreline and 22 acres of upland of which 7 acres remain undeveloped. This small but interesting project helps in the much greater goal to restore Puget Sound, remove invasive species, provides an opportunity to connect with the tribes and the larger project includes a volunteer component that helps those volunteering to develop ownership in the health of the land and the restoration effort in particular. |
$4,535 |
| Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition |
The Foundation provided $3000 for outreach to generate 100,000 official public comments (mostly postcards) on the latest Federal Salmon Plan for the Columbia, expected to be released by the Administration on 10/31/07. They will use the opportunity of the release and subsequent comment period provides to educate and mobilize the public in WA, OR, and ID about the plan that they expect to be seriously deficient, if recent past history is any indication. The ultimate goal of SOS is the removal of the Snake River Dams but this project is limited to the plan and the implications it may have to accomplishing their goal. They expect to not have much effect on the final policy but hope that their outreach will influence the next Administration and Congress with the support they will be able to show for salmon recovery. |
$3,000 |
| Seattle Central Community College |
The Foundation provided $1000 to purchase native plants and tools for the Native Northwest Collection of their Plant Sciences Laboratory grounds. The garden is intended to educate students and the general public about sustainability and permaculture and to grow and study native NW plants as well as develop a diverse academic collection for sustainability. The garden would support their culinary arts programs as well as teach students and the general public about the backgrounds of the plants and the ecological significance of their particular niches. The funding is for plants and supplies, not overhead and involved community outreach. |
$1,000 |
| Sightline Institute |
The Foundation provided $1000 to support research and production of their Cascadia Scorecard, an annual report on the state of the Northwest. This scorecard is given to activists, citizens and policy makers as information they need to work for protection of the Northwest’s natural spaces. Key indicators they track include sprawl, energy and wildlife which help provide a basis for annual assessment of the health of our wild spaces and identification of those policy solutions bearing the greatest opportunities for leverage in the interest of a sustainable Northwest |
$1,000 |
| Sitka Conservation Society |
The Foundation provided $5000 to help conduct their 3rd year of groundtruthing on the Tongass National Forest. They plan to conduct ground-based field assessments on two Forest Service districts on the northern Tongass in collaboration with the USFS, a timber mill, AK natives and a partner conservation organization to perform reality checks on options for new forest management schemes. All logging to date on the Tongass has been Old Growth, since logging has mostly been too recent for second growth to have adequately matured, and future efforts will hopefully lead to less dependence on this source. But, the USFS will not change management paradigms without prodding and ground-based evidence which this project is designed to do. Their 2007 plans include assessment of USFS restoration efforts on one district, landscape analysis of a 2nd district to determine if similar efforts would be possible while determining how to limit the footprint of a currently existing mill and a media outreach campaign. This effort to use on-the-ground assessment is apparently a rarity in AK, though fairly common in the lower 48, and will support a realistic decision-making process which will hopefully help to protect or restore some of the landscape on our nation’s largest National Forest. |
$5,000 |
| Somali Community Services of Seattle |
The Foundation provided $2500 for educational workshops on environmental issues, followed up with home visits and an environmental field trip for East African refugee families residing in the King County area. This organization will teach about recycling, safety on household cleaning products, health effects related to the use of household chemicals, disposition of toxic waste, energy conservation, etc. The workshop would be conducted in English and at least 2 African dialects. The field trips would be local and appropriate to the program and they have strong support from Seattle Public Utilities and others. This project is very local, helps a definitely underserved community (which is growing quickly) and in their own language where they can hopefully grasp the concepts more easily, and introduces people who have essentially no concept of local environmental issues to some basic conservation principles. |
$2,500 |
| South Okanogan-Similkameen Invasive Plant Society |
The Foundation provided $4000 to re-measure and assess vegetation plots and photo points established within the confines of the 2003 fire-impacted Okanogan valley in BC. Baseline data was collected in 2004 and permanent transects were established after the massive fires on the BC Okanogan in 2003. This study is to assess the recovery of the area and especially to study the response of invasive plants to fire, on which there is currently little published data. Data will be used to predict the response of non-native species to other fire-impacted area, specifically the adjoining Tripod and Tatoosh fire complexes in Washington that burned in 2006. |
$4,000 |
| University of Idaho |
The Foundation provided $5325 for a project conducted by Dr. Mazeika S. P. Sullivan of the Dept. of Fish & Wildlife in the College of Natural Resources that will focus on data collection relating to the American Dipper, an aquatic bird whose breeding and feeding ecology are closely ties to stream health. This work will take place across Idaho watersheds, including the Frank Church “River of No Return” Wilderness. The goal is to understand how various land use practices in mountain landscapes influence stream health as measured by aspects of American Dipper ecology. Given its habitat and behavior, the American Dipper likely is a good indicator species for this purpose |
$5,325 |
| Walama Restoration Project |
The Foundation provided $2500 for continuing restoration effort on a heavily impacted campground restoration project the Obsidian Falls area of the 3 Sisters Wilderness. They are planting native species in some areas to restore native species composition, function and structure and trying to establish corridors between viable plant communities, They plan to test and monitor the feasibility of the project’s success for use in other degraded habitats in other Congressionally designated sub-alpine and alpine Wilderness areas. The first phase of this project was seed collect and baseline monitoring and they have gained knowledge which has allowed them to fine-tune their propagation and transplantation methods so that now more than 75% of their seeds germinate. Some species even have a 95% germination rate. These are ready to plant in 2007. The Foundation funded a part of the first phase of this project in 2005. The methodology they’re developing should be useful on other projects. |
$2,500 |
| Washington Trails Association |
The Foundation provided $5000 to help coordinate the overhaul of their web site, the key tool they use to reach thousands of hikers, all potential volunteers and stewards. The grant would help to provide for a variety of enhanced online tools and a better organization of the information on the site to help hikers stay informed and involved. Their long-time webmaster is leaving and the changeover is an opportunity to update and revamp their site. This is a premier hiking, trail stewardship and hiker advocacy organization that literally spends tens of thousands of person-hours each year helping to maintain trails throughout Washington. Their current web site is a very useful tool but could use significant updating. |
$5,000 |
| David Wallin - WWU professor |
The Foundation provided $4803 to study the 70% decline in mountain goat populations in the Washington Cascades since the 1960s. Evidence suggests that these declines are due to over hunting and although hunting levels have been drastically reduced, the goat populations have not recovered in most of the Cascades. Dr. Wallin suggests this may be due to lower elevation habitat fragmentation and proposes to conduct genetic evaluation of goats across the Cascades and determine the level of inbreeding and thus the degree of isolation of various populations. Evaluation would compare their health and diversity against expanding populations and attempt to determine critical dispersal corridors which may affect land use decisions. They also plan to determine the potential effects of introducing additional alleles (via cross-breeding) from the Olympic herds. The project will provide information helpful in making decisions about what steps need to be taken to return a healthy mountain goat population in an area of personal interest to Mountaineers. |
$4,308 |
| Wild Salmon Center |
The Foundation provided $5000 to produce a report that will synthesize their research on the most important habitat in the Hoh River basin and make conservation recommendations. They will use the report to influence local stakeholders and decision makers of the importance of spawning and rearing habitats in unprotected portions, particularly the riparian corridors of the tributaries feeding the Hoh River in order to influence land practices in the basin. A significant effort has gone into protecting the main stem of the Hoh and this effort will help to protect its tributaries which contribute so much to the health of the main river. |
$5,000 |
| Total Funded 2007 |
$146,370
|
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