March 2007
Paul Sihler (Helena, MT)
Paul Sihler is the Partnership Coordinator for the Heart of the Rockies Initiative, a collaborative effort by 23 local, regional and national land trusts who work to voluntarily conserve the most biologically and agriculturally valuable private lands in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the Crown of the Continent & Idaho Panhandle. Since 2002 he has led efforts to advance the rate of private land conservation, increase organizational and collective capacity and develop a coordinated approach to the legal defense of conservation easements. His past work experience includes employment with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, The Environmental Quality Council of the Montana State Legislature and the Keystone Center. In 2005, Paul and a colleague were named the Don Aldrich Conservationists of the Year by the Montana Wildlife Federation for their efforts to reauthorize a $5 million annual funding program for habitat conservation. He lives with his wife Linda and daughter Emma in Helena, MT where they spend as much time as they can in the mountains and running rivers.

February 2007
Dyan Oldenburg (Santa Fe, NM)
Dyan Oldenburg founded Training Resources for the Environmental Community (TREC) in 1997. As executive director, she assists in developing and directing TREC’s programs and provides services to TREC clients. She has worked on numerous legislative, electoral and issue campaigns since 1979. Dyan ably assists environmental nonprofits in growing their leaders, boards and organizations. She is dedicated to helping groups meet their missions and manage change. Her straw bale, solar house at the end of the road is her refuge. She can often be seen riding one of her horses in the back country of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Northern New Mexico with her dog Bella running along side her. She is a graduate of Antioch College with a degree in political science, management and community service.

December 2006
John Wallin (Reno, NV)
John is the director of the Nevada Wilderness Project. His passion for the outdoors has brought him to exotic locales around the globe. John's educational career entailed lives in two classically different American cities, Washington DC and Las Vegas. John is often sighted with the greatest desert dog known to any man, Isabelle. His Nissan pickup has also covered more miles in Nevada than any truck we can think of. Sadly, though, it has recently become something of a driveway ornament.

December 2006
Sandy Bahr (Phoenix, AZ)
Sandy is the Conservation Director for Arizona's Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club. She has worked actively on environmental and political issues in Arizona for the past twenty years, both as a volunteer and as a staff person for various organizations including the Arizona Audubon Council, Arizona Common Cause, and the McDowell Sonoran Land Trust. Sandy served on the Chandler Redevelopment Advisory Committee, various citizen transit committees, the Governor's Air Quality Strategies Task Force, the Arizona Groundwater Cleanup Task Force, the Cost Evaluation Working Group for Arizona's Environmental Portfolio Standard, and the Governor's Climate Change Advisory Group. She also has been a literacy tutor for individuals who speak English as a second language. Sandy was recognized by the US Environmental Protection Agency with its 2004 Award for Outstanding Environmental Achievement and, in 2000, by the Arizona Social Change Fund with its Visionary Award.

December 2005
Lisa Matthaus (Victoria, BC)
Lisa is the Coast Campaign Coordinator for the Sierra Club of Canada's BC Chapter. Since 2002 she has led the Chapter's involvement in the fight to protect one of the world's last large tracts of intact ancient temperate rainforest, the Great Bear Rainforest. Lisa joined the BC Chapter in 1998 and has taken lead roles for the Chapter in several forestry-related initiatives, particularly those related to logging subsidies, forest community transition and related forest policy reform. She was also one of the lead negotiators of the recently-approved Forest Stewardship Council standards for BC. As an environmental economist, Lisa's passion for this work comes from a desire to apply real, on-the-ground solutions that allow people to live within the limits of our ecosystems - where economics and ecology meet.

September 2005
Merran Smith (Smithers, BC)
Merran is the BC Coastal Program Director of ForestEthics. She has worked at the center of efforts to protect BC's Great Bear Rainforest since the late 1990s. A biologist, Merran worked previously as the Forest Campaigner with the Sierra Club of Canada, BC Chapter, and was on the founding board of the Forest Stewardship Council in BC. Prior to working on forest issues, she worked producing award winning documentary videos on environmental, social justice, and human rights issues. Merran lives in a straw bale house in northern BC close to the mountains and rivers that keep her energized.

December 2005
Dominick DellaSala (Ashland, OR)
Dominick DellaSala is Director of World Wildlife Fund's Klamath-Siskiyou Regional Program in Ashland, Oregon. He is an internationally renowned author of over 150 technical papers, co-author of four books on biodiversity and sustainable forest management, subject editor for the Natural Areas Journal, guest editor for Conservation Biology, and is on the board of directors for the Society for Conservation Biology, North American section. Dr. DellaSala received WWF's President's Award in 2000 and 2004 for his outstanding achievements in the U.S., including his leadership in securing protections for over 300,000 acres of brown bear habitat and coastal rainforests within the Kodiak archipelago, Alaska, scientific support for the designation of the nearly 53,000 acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southwest Oregon, and scientific support for federal roadless area policies and the Northwest Forest Plan. Dr. DellaSala is motivated by his love of nature, a passion for bringing science to policy makers, and a concern for passing on a living planet to his daughter and her grandchildren.

September 2005
John Bergenske (Kimberley, BC)
John Bergenske is Executive Director of Wildsight and a passionate advocate for wildlife and wild places. For three decades, John has successfully campaigned for wilderness protection in Canada's Columbia and southern Rocky Mountains. He has played a leading a role in the protection of key landscapes in southeastern British Columbia, including the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy, Height of the Rockies Provincial Park, and the Columbia Wetlands. He is currently working with timber companies to implement Forest Stewardship Council standards, using FSC certification and markets pressure to secure protection for endangered forests. John has lead field research on transboundary populations of mountain caribou and grizzly bears, work that he uses to maintain and restore key habitats through engagement with government and industry. He is a lead strategist in the campaign to expand Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park into British Columbia's Flathead Valley. John's leadership and work with coalitions such as the Yellowstone-to-Yukon Conservation Initiative and the Mountain Caribou Project helps Wildsight advance its conservation agenda domestically and internationally.

November 2004
Ric Careless (Gibsons, BC)
Ric is the CEO of BC Spaces for Nature and executive director of the BC Wilderness Tourism Association. He led the continental campaign to protect the 2.5 million-acre Tatshenshini, thereby completing the largest international preserve and complex of World Heritage Sites in the world. He has coordinated wilderness preservation campaigns for over 30 years and has played a lead role in the protection of more than 7.5 million acres of wilderness. As documented in his 1997 book 'To Save the Wild Earth', these areas include Tatshenshini-Alsek Park, Spatsizi Wilderness Park, Chilcotin Ark, Central Purcell Wilderness Conservancy, Height of the Rockies Wilderness, and the Nitinat Triangle in Pacific Rim National Park'. Mr. Careless co-founded the Sierra Club in British Columbia and has worked as an environmental policy advisor to the BC Cabinet.

October 2004
Liz Bell (Seattle, WA)
Liz , Advisor and co-founder of Land Conservation Advisory Services, has over 20 years of experience working with land trusts, national conservation organizations, and the federal government in land conservation. For the past eight years her work focused on strengthening the organizational and programmatic excellence of land trusts in the Pacific Northwest. Most recently, she has assisted land trusts in the intermountain West with development of sustainable, focused land conservation programs. Through training, new tools, and the aid of a regrant program, Northwest land trusts strengthened boards of directors, educated staff, and developed innovative land conservation and stewardship programs. Her work experience includes employment as Northwest Director, Land Trust Alliance; Director of Land Protection for The Nature Conservancy's Massachusetts Chapter; and as Executive Director of the Essex County Greenbelt Association (MA). She lives with her husband Peter and their daughter Louisa in Seattle where they ski, bike, hike and garden.

September 2004
Ed Zuckerman (Seattle, WA)
Since July 2001, Ed has served as the executive director of the Federation of State Conservation Voter Leagues (FSCVL), a national program to develop and support state Leagues of Conservation Voters (LCVs). The organization distributes over one million dollars in grants to state LCVs, runs an annual conference, regional trainings, and provides on-site mentoring. Prior to managing the Federation, Ed served for seven years as the director of Washington Conservation Voters (WCV) and the Washington Environmental Alliance for Voter Education (WEAVE). Under his leadership, these sister organizations became national leaders in voter education and participation programs. In 1995, Ed put together the very first program that matched voter data with the membership lists of environmental organizations. This program has since become a national model, significantly increasing the turnout of environmental voters in local, state and national elections over the last 10 years. Ed has a B.A. in Political Science from The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington. He lives in Seattle with his wife Mary and two children, Ellie and Ira. Ed commutes to work by bike every day and is also a part-time cross-country ski instructor.

August 2004
Bob Ekey (Bozeman, MT)
Bob joined The Wilderness Society in 1998 as regional director of the Northern Rockies office, in Bozeman. He is an established leader on conservation efforts in the Northern Rockies, and often focuses efforts on building coalitions to achieve conservation goals. His work also focuses on building broader public support for protection of wild lands, including our national parks, Forest Service roadless lands, and wildlife refuges. Bob is former chair of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Previously, he served as communications director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition for six years, where he was a leader in the campaign to stop the proposed New World gold mine adjacent to Yellowstone Park. A former award-winning journalist working in Montana, Bob gained national recognition for his coverage of the 1988 Yellowstone fires. He wrote the book "Yellowstone on Fire!," and later a children's book on the fires. He is a graduate of the Ohio University School of Journalism.

March 2004
John Horning (Santa Fe, NM)
John is the executive director of Forest Guardians, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. During his ten years at Forest Guardians John has devoted himself to public lands and biodiversity conservation in the Southwest. His capacities have included grazing program director, watershed protection director, and conservation director. He stepped into the executive director post two years ago. His work has been guided by the value of protecting public lands, of reforming policies that affect them, and of nourishing broad public support for their improved management.

March 2004
Roger Flynn (Boulder, CO)
Roger is the founding Director and Managing Attorney of the Western Mining Action Project (WMAP), representing public interests on mining issues in the West since 1993. WMAP is the only public interest law firm specializing in mining issues in the country. WMAP has offices in Boulder, Colorado, and Reno, Nevada. Roger is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado School of Law and the University Of Wyoming College of Law, teaching Mining and Mineral Development Law. He was formerly staff attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund and the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies, specializing in mining, public lands, and western water law. Roger received his J.D. from the University of Colorado Law School in 1991, where he was a founding member and staff editor for the Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy. He earned his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University in 1984. Roger lives outside Boulder, Colorado with his wife Michelle and two sons, Sean (10) and Brian (7).

October 2003
Karsten Heuer (Robson Valley, BC)
For the last 10 years Karsten has worked seasonally as a park warden in Canada's Banff (Alberta) and Ivvavik (northern Yukon) national parks. In 1998 and 1999 he took a leave of absence from both jobs to walk from Yellowstone to the Yukon, stopping in more than 100 communities during the 3,400km-long trip to give hundreds of public presentations and media interviews about the Y2Y Conservation Initiative. Along with his bestselling book about the journey, Walking the Big Wild, Heuer has singlehandedly introduced hundreds of thousands of North Americans to the idea of connecting isolated reserves and parks with wildlife corridors in order to avoid extinction. More recently, Karsten, along with his wife Leanne Allison, spent five months following the transboundary Porcupine Caribou Herd through Alaska and the Yukon on their annual migration. He plans to travel across the U.S. and Canada to deliver their important story in the next two years. For more information, please visit the couple's web site.

August 2003
Cindy Shogan (Washington, DC)
Cindy is the Executive Director of the Alaska Wilderness League. Over the past five years AWL's membership has grown from 200 to 10,000. AWL founded the Wayburn Wilderness House in December 2000 - a work environment for seven wilderness groups and visiting wilderness advocates. In 2002 the Alaska Wilderness League was one of seven organizations to receive the inaugural Leadership Award from the Natural Resources Council of America for the environmental community's campaign to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Cindy came to AWL after serving as legislative director of Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Before SUWA, Cindy worked for Defenders of Wildlife, the Izaak Walton League, and the Sierra Club.

December 2002
Heidi McIntosh (Salt Lake City, UT)
Recently named "Energy and Natural Resources Attorney of the Year" by the Utah State Bar Association, Heidi directs all conservation and legal campaigns for Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). She received her BA from the University of Arizona-Tucson in both political science and German, then went on to receive her law degree at Georgetown University Law Center in 1986. In 1994, she completed a Master of Law in Environmental and Natural Resources Law, and was the recipient of the Judge Rulon Clark Graduate Fellowship. With SUWA since 1993, Heidi is the organization's driving force on public policy and litigation strategies.

March 2002
Louisa Willcox (Bozeman, MT)
Louisa is one of the most accomplished environmental activists in the Yellowstone to Yukon region, and for more than 25 years she has been the point-person for grizzly bear conservation and advocacy in the Northern Rockies. She is a tireless watchdog monitoring federal, state, and Canadian provincial agency management of critical grizzly bear populations and habitat. Her early conservation work was as an expedition leader with the National Outdoor Leadership, a reporter with the High Country News, and the Field Studies Director at the Teton Science School in Jackson, Wyoming.

March 2002
Bart Robinson (Canmore, AB)
Bart is the Communications Director, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y). He was Y2Y's first full-time staff member. From 1996 until February 2001, Bart oversaw Y2Y's development and day-to-day operation. Prior to his work with Y2Y, Bart worked as an author, journalist, and editor and was the founding editor of Equinox magazine, Canada's largest environmental publication. Bart has been an active conservationist for over 30 years, involved in numerous campaigns and organizations. He is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen and well acquainted with the politics and cultures of both countries.

September, 2001
Bill Marlett (Bend, OR)
Bill is the Executive Director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA). He was hired as ONDA's first executive director in 1993. Since then he has helped ONDA evolve into one of the most effective grassroots groups in the West. Bill has been one of the leaders of a collaborative effort to protect the magnificent Steens Mountains in south central Oregon. Last year his efforts finally paid off when legislation was passed to set up a new and unique protected area known as the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area.

August 2001
Patti Goldman (Seattle, WA)
Patti is the Managing Attorney of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund's Northwest office. Since 1994, she has been at the forefront of legal efforts to safeguard ancient forests, protect salmon, and guard in-stream water qualities in the Northwest. In addition, she is a recognized authority on the threat that international trade institutions pose to environmental protections. Earlier this year her efforts led to a federal appeals court barring nearly 200 timber sales stretching from southern Washington to Northern California.

May 2001
Chris Herrman (Durango, CO)
Chris is the Western Regional Director of the Land Trust Alliance (LTA). He was the first director of LTA's Northwest Program in Seattle, and his leadership helped expand and substantially strengthen the land trust movement in this region. He also created LTA's Mentor Program, which provides one-on-one assistance to land trusts and helps in building strong organizations that can more effectively protect open lands. Chris moved to his current position in 1998 and now oversees the entire western region of the U.S. An avid river rafter, Chris loves to be out on the land (and water) while looking for new and innovative ways to help protect it.

October 2000
Dave Willis (Ashland, OR)
Dave is the Chair of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council. Since 1983, he has been working to protect the Soda Mountain region in southern Oregon, an area that is considered one of North America's most ecologically diverse landscapes. A relentless spokesperson for conservation, Dave has spent the better part of 17 years meeting with agency officials, community leaders and Congressional and Administration representatives in an effort to protect Soda Mountain. When he was not in meetings or going to meetings, he led pack trips into the area so that people could see the beauty and diversity of the area first-hand. His persistence was finally rewarded in June 2000, when President Clinton declared 52,000 acres around Soda Mountain as the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

July 2000
George Smith (Gibsons, BC)
George is the National Conservation Director for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Our award is made in recognition of George's long and important role in helping to protect vast areas in the Northern Rockies region of British Columbia, including the Muskwa-Kechika, an 80,000 square kilometer (20 million acre) unlogged roadless area that is home to the greatest abundance and diversity of large mammals in North America. George's work to protect this area began in 1992 and continued through years of regional Land and Resource Planning processes, including dozens of meetings with local, provincial and First Nations leaders. George began working with CPAWS in March 1991.

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