Claire Cella

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If you’re familiar with our calendar photography contest, you’ll know that our theme for the past few years has been #MyWyoming. But 2020 has proved to be very different and, as we are all learning, some things may never be quite the same.

As we have responded to a global pandemic and participated in long-overdue conversations about racial inequality in the U.S., we’ve all shared one thing in common — Wyoming. As COVID-19 swept across the country and did not spare anyone its effects, we as Wyomingites became almost painfully aware of how much we rely on each other in our small communities. We are all in this thing called “life” together. And not only us, but the natural world around us, too. 

As we sought some sense of normalcy, or an escape, many of us turned to the local outdoors. We watched spring come to our lawns and distant hills, heard the birds return to the branches of trees, felt the rush of the runoff in rivers, and in Lander we smelled apple blossoms in the air. Because we live in a state so sparsely populated and with some of the country’s best public lands right outside our doorsteps, we found ourselves grateful for where we live — and all of the people we share these places with.

I recognize that our Indigenous neighbors and friends have deep ties to Wyoming that predate statehood. Today, this place, this Wyoming, that many of us call home — with its abundant public lands, herds of roaming wildlife, pristine mountain streams and clean air — is a Wyoming we share with future generations. This Wyoming that I love is not mine alone, either. It is ours. All of ours. To cherish, to enjoy, to value, to share, and to protect. And that’s why, this year, more than ever, it is #OurWyoming. 

We’re asking those who submit this year to send us photos of this shared space — and who you shared Wyoming with. It can be your kids or friends at your favorite local viewpoint, your family on a picnic in a state park, your partner ahead of you on the trail, the mule deer who graces your backyard each morning, the bird of prey spotted soaring above, or the moose that stumbled into your campsite. It should not be a selfie! We’ll ask the winners to share a little statement about what that moment meant to them — and reflect on how it felt to share it.

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TERMS & CONDITIONS

Entries must be submitted between July 15, 2020, and before midnight on September 15, 2020, either via email (claire@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org) or Instagram, using the hashtag #OurWyoming.

By entering, all contestants agree to release their photo to the Wyoming Outdoor Council for publication purposes. The Outdoor Council will select the winning photos, which will be published in the 2021 calendar. All submitted photos are subject to use.

Your entry to the contest constitutes your agreement to allow your entered photographs, as well as your name and the place the photograph was taken, to be published in the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s 2021 calendar and on the Outdoor Council’s website to promote the annual photo contest. Reproduction of entries will include the necessary photographer credit.

Photograph entries constitute permission to use the images in this manner with credit to the photographer without monetary compensation. Contest entrants retain ownership and all other rights to future use of the photographs they enter. Use of the entered photos in any other fashion or in any other publications will only occur with permission from the entrant.

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John Rader, the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s newest conservation advocate, spent part of 2014 walking through Chile’s monsoon rains each day in a suit, knocking on the doors of locals and visiting the offices of industry workers, bureaucrats, and the media. He was researching a massive and contentious hydropower project for his senior thesis at the University of Wyoming. Citizens, worried the five proposed dams would destroy the country’s pristine southern valleys, had been protesting its construction for years.

The day after John left Chile, the Chilean government cancelled the project. The victory was a testament to the strength of passionate, engaged citizens — and to the persistence of the lawyers working alongside them to hold energy companies and decision makers accountable for the project’s environmental impacts. But for John, finishing up his thesis and working toward his political science degree back home in Laramie, it was also a wake-up call.

“I’d been reporting on the situation, but not actively influencing or helping the outcome,” he said. “That’s when I decided that practicing law was the way I could have an immediate impact on these issues and really make a change.”

In 2015 John enrolled in University of Colorado’s School of Law, where he specialized in environmental law and learned the ins and outs of natural resource and public lands issues. He saw clear parallels between his research in Chile and energy development issues in Wyoming.

“These are both instances of governments and industries imposing projects on local populations, often without enough public process or adequate environmental review,” he said. “People can and should have a say, and political and social agency, in development.”

In one of his law professors, Charles Wilkinson, John found an incredible mentor — and a powerful example of the kind of attorney he wanted to be. “Meeting Charles was the first time I’d seen I’d seen a lawyer driven by love, with a clear vision for the West — rooted in the history of the land and its peoples.”

That example of passion in action drove John to actively seek professional opportunities that would allow him to effect real change on issues he cared about: sustainable development and natural resources. His search brought him to Lander in 2017, where he interned for Trout Unlimited; it also introduced him to longtime environmental attorney and WOC senior conservation advocate, Dan Heilig, under whom he worked as an extern last year. John was impressed with the Outdoor Council’s “pragmatic and nonpartisan approach” and felt the organization’s focus on public lands, air, water, and wildlife aligned with his interests. He also found Dan’s deep knowledge of the law and the lands he works to protect inspiring.

It’s easy to find lawyers doing the work for the money, the prestige, or because of family expectations, John said. But for John, those are not motivating factors. What motivates him is passion — and the promise that he can have an active hand in ensuring a sustainable future for the West. John said he is happy to be working for an organization that combines a wide range of tools to make a difference, from law and policy expertise to grassroots advocacy to communications.

Right now, John is working closely with Dan to protect the world-renowned Red Desert to Hoback mule deer migration corridor, which is under threat from oil and gas leasing. He’s also working on comments for the Lost Creek uranium mine project near Rawlins that would endanger critical sage-grouse habitat, drafting an alternative for the BLM’s Rock Springs Resource Management Plan revision that would better protect habitat and recreational values in the northern Red Desert and surrounding areas, and fighting for good governance practices via the Wyoming Public Records Act.

It’s lot of research, reading, and writing for now, but John acknowledges the necessity of this kind of tedious legwork. 

“I just see this as part of the process to make change,” he said.

If you have any questions for John and his work, you can reach him at john@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org.