Our annual calendar contest is one of our staff’s favorite creative projects because it opens a window for us to see Wyoming through the eyes of our members, supporters, and fellow Wyomingites — the people who share the values we advocate for day in and day out. Every year for ten years, we’ve remained humbled by your interest and participation in the contest. Because of your engagement, we’re able to produce a calendar filled with a diversity of perspectives that capture our state’s big, wild backyard. We’re grateful for your willingness to share these treasured views and momentous scenes with us — from glimpses of one of the last remaining glaciers in the Wind River Range, to nights spent under star-studded skies, to horsepacking trips through the remote wilds of the Thorofare, to the abundance of wildlife that cross our paths.
If you’re a Wyoming Outdoor Council member, watch your mailbox for the calendar next month. If you’re not, you can still join us! In addition to ensuring you’ll get a calendar in the mail, you’ll also receive the most up-to-date information on our work as we strive to protect what you see in the calendar pages.
And remember, it’s never too early to start preparing for next year’s contest. We’re always looking for shots that capture the quiet beauty of winter, your family’s spontaneous outdoor adventures, and the everyday, real Wyoming that’s just outside your door. Sign up for our emails to be the first to know when we begin the search for 2021, and keep your camera close!
THIS YEAR’S WINNERS
Kyle Aiton Kinley Bollinger Ken Bryan Jon Burkholz Scott Copeland Cheryl Elliott Mack Frost Karinthia Harrison Beth Holmes Stacey Jarrett Rob Joyce Terry Lane Sean McKinley Shane Morrison Sherry Pincus Raymond Salani Ed Sherline Bill Sincavage Kyle Spradley Christopher Thomas Brandon Ward
Many wildlife photographers will say that “perfect” shots involve luck and being in the right place at the right time. The real trick, said Debbie Tubridy, is observing and interpreting the animals and their signs. It’s a skill she used to capture the foraging mule deer buck that we featured in our 2019 calendar. As an avid and longtime wildlife photographer, Turbidy knew this shot was special.
“Usually animals put their heads up and look right at you, but this guy just continued to reach his head right up to get those leaves,” she said, “as if I weren’t even there.”
The autumn morning the image was taken, Debbie was out on a drive with her husband and a friend. They were just leaving Grand Teton National Park when they came upon the buck.
“It had just finished raining,” she remembered, “and we had gone out to see what we could find. This was one of the last shots I took that day, and it’s the type of scene that brought me out West.”
Although Debbie closely follows the guidelines for wildlife photography — using cars as blinds, approaching cautiously, always giving animals adequate space — her underlying ethic is not to disturb animals.
“They shouldn’t change their behavior because I’m there,” she said. “I want them to act as they are. A lot of my shots are not the close-ups of their faces, but catching them in their natural state and environment. That’s part of the story, and you need to show that.”
Her philosophy is similar to the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s approach to wildlife advocacy — especially around mule deer migration corridors. Science shows that disturbance inside corridors isn’t good for mule deer herds. It’s an issue Turbidy has been following as an Outdoor Council member. She said she wishes more people took responsibility for the impact their decisions have on wildlife.
“That’s why I like to photograph wildlife, because I can help tell the animals’ story, and help show people that we’re all connected. I like to think I’m helping increase people’s awareness and appreciation for animals with my images.”
There is just something special about stopping and sharing a moment with an animal, she said.
“It’s like all time stands still for me. It’s super cool. And I just wish other people could have this same experience — could go and see, touch, feel, understand nature. And then think about the decisions we make regarding wildlife and the environment.”
Debbie and her husband moved to Fruita, Colorado, from southern Florida two years ago after years of traveling West. “I did the math,” Turbidy laughed, “and Fruita was the spot because it was within a day’s drive of all of the places we loved to visit — Wyoming included.”
“There’s a certain amount of truth here,” she said of the West. “People stand up for their values — for the wildlife and landscapes. And, being from populated southern Florida, we love the solitude of the wilderness we find here. The unspoiled beauty that remains in these varied terrains.”
“I just think, if we’re good stewards of the environment, everything else — flora and fauna — also falls into place.”
Join Debbie and other photographers by submitting your own shot of Wyoming for the Outdoor Council’s 2020 Calendar Contest. You can enter your photos via Instagram or email. To submit your photo(s) via Instagram, you must have a public Instagram account so that we’re able to view your submission. Upload your photo(s) and add the hashtag #MyWyoming.
Ten years ago, we launched what would become an annual Wyoming Outdoor Council tradition — the calendar photo contest. Although the political, social, and environmental landscape has changed in the decade since its inception, the purpose and impact of the calendar has remained the same: to showcase the place that so many of us choose to call home.
The calendar also serves as a vital reminder of why we — as stewards of public lands, as engaged members, and as concerned citizens — do what we do to protect this place, day in and day out, year after year. It’s not only a look back at how we experienced the past year outdoors, but it also offers motivation to continue this work well into the future.
With so much at stake for our water, air, lands, and wildlife in 2020 — especially here in Wyoming — it could be easy to feel discouraged. The calendar helps us remember what the work is about. It’s about Wyoming. Your Wyoming. My Wyoming. The Wyoming you’ll leave to your grandchildren and to their grandchildren after them. It’s the Wyoming of today and the Wyoming of the future.
We want to know: what does that Wyoming look like for you? Show us your best. The hopeful, wild, stunning, humbling places that inspire you to take a photograph — and to stand up for this one-of-a-kind place. Every year for the last ten we’ve tried to show and share these stories as reminders of the gift we have in our backyard and to keep inspiring the work it takes to make sure this gift endures beyond calendar pages. Help us tell the story of your Wyoming!
HOW TO ENTER
You can enter the 2020 calendar contest two ways: through Instagram or email. To submit your photo(s) via Instagram, you must have a public Instagram account so that we’re able to view your submission. Upload your photo(s) and add the hashtag #MyWyoming.
To submit your photo(s) via email, send your photo(s) to claire@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org.
TERMS & CONDITIONS
Entries must be submitted between July 15, 2019, and before midnight on September 15, 2019, either via email (claire@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org) or Instagram, using the hashtag #MyWyoming. By entering, all contestants agree to release their photo to the Wyoming Outdoor Council for publication purposes. The Wyoming Outdoor Council will select the winning photos, which will be published in the 2020 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 2020 calendar and on the Wyoming 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.
Our creative team looks forward to running our calendar photo contest every year. It’s always a great opportunity to connect with Outdoor Council members and supporters and see Wyoming through your eyes. This year, we received nearly 1,000 Instagram entries with the hashtag #MyWyoming — a big increase from last year. Your images offered diverse perspectives on our state, its residents and visitors, and our shared values.
Thanks to everyone who participated. With your help, we can feature some truly stunning scenes from across the state — from gushing waterfalls in the Bighorns, to a surging summer thunderstorm in Teton County, to hunters trekking through sage near Lander, to a marmot popping up to say hello. We love to see folks enjoying Wyoming’s public lands as much as we do, and we’re grateful you thought to share some of these gorgeous moments with us.
Watch your mailbox for the calendar next month. And remember, it’s never too early to start snapping photographs for next year’s contest. We’ll be eager to see where you go and what you do! Sign up for our emails to be the first to know when we begin the search for 2020’s photos.
THIS YEAR’S WINNERS
Sam Cook Susan Marsh Joel Luzmoor Jon Burkholz Carl Oksanen Juan David Randy Quarles Ashton Hooker David Rule Leslie Eglseder Beth Holmes Patrick Amole Terry Lane Alyssa Wesner Jennifer Hansen Jessica Jacquay Tammy Neufeld Kristi Pucci Cheryl Elliott
Landon Blanchard
Stacey Jarrett
Ross Thompson
Debbie Tubridy
Jeremy Blazek
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.
This summer we asked you to weigh in on several oil and gas leasing actions that would degrade wildlife habitat and other special landscapes in Wyoming. You responded by submitting comments and letting officials know that some places just aren’t right for development. Thank you! Because of your quick action, we have a few successes to report.
But first some context.
In western states, U.S. Bureau of Land Management lease sales are growing exponentially in size. This year, the number of federal acres offered for oil and gas development in Wyoming ballooned from 170,509 in the first quarter to a whopping 700,000 acres in the fourth.
“I’ve never seen a lease sale in Wyoming of that size, ever. Seems like it’s a firesale,” Outdoor Council Senior Conservation Advocate Dan Heilig said.
Following the president’s “energy dominance” directive, the BLM is also offering shorter timeframes for the public to review and respond to lease sales, while also ignoring its previous commitments to not lease in areas undergoing planning revisions. This has led to leases being sold in areas that have less than adequate protection.
And the public isn’t even getting a fair return. Many lease parcels offered in these sensitive areas are selling for the federal minimum of $2 per acre, whereas parcels in developed areas “in play” can go for $3,200 per acre.
This year, the number of federal acres offered for oil and gas development in Wyoming ballooned from 170,509 in the first quarter to a whopping 700,000 acres in the fourth. (Wyoming BLM)
“It’s not benefiting the public treasury,” Heilig said. “They’re not getting the best value per acre for these parcels.”
According to a July 2018 article by Reveal, “Some energy experts say the Trump administration is trying to lease lots of federal land that oil companies don’t even want. Of the 11.9 million acres offered by the administration in 2017, 792,823 [acres] received bids, considerably less than the 921,240 acres out of 1.9 million under the Obama administration in 2016.”
The sale of a lease parcel conveys a legal right to develop. Because neither the state nor the federal government is carefully analyzing where it sells, or allows citizens time to comment, the public stands to lose.
Back in 2012, citizens rallied to help purchase and retire nearly 60,000 acres of oil and gas leases in the Upper Hoback of the Wyoming Range. These were leases originally bought on the cheap, which citizens then spent $8.75 million to purchase and retire. Today’s wave of federal leasing poses similarly costly threats far into the future, whether leases must be bought out in some places, or development robs the public of productive wildlife habitat and outdoor and tourism dollars.
Your voice matters
In the July Wyoming state lease sale your emails, letters, and phone calls to state officials helped result in a handful of lease parcels being pulled — one at the foot of Boar’s Tusk. This is fantastic news. Unfortunately, the State Board of Land Commissioners approved the sale of nearly two dozen other parcels that we and many partners opposed.
This shortsighted lease sale not only threatens critical wildlife habitat and rare cultural resources in the Red Desert, it also highlights several deficiencies in the state leasing process. First, the state’s public notice for oil and gas lease sales is woefully inadequate. The state allowed only 30 days for the public to review 187 proposed leases statewide. Second, although the public may access and comment on proposed lease sales, the state provides no formal avenue to do so.
With your help we will continue to push officials to resolve these deficiencies. And, recognizing that Wyoming’s constitution prioritizes uses of state lands to generate revenue for Wyoming schools, we’ll also keep touting a better alternative to leasing special state landscapes for energy development: exchanging those lands for BLM parcels better suited to industrial development.
On the federal front
The state’s July lease sale precedes two federal oil and gas lease sales that also include parcels in sensitive areas, such as Greater sage-grouse core areas, crucial winter range, and the Red Desert to Hoback mule deer migration corridor.
So far, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has been reluctant to weigh in on recent federal leasing actions with its own expertise. We continue to urge the state to guide federal agencies on matters best understood by expert biologists citing the best available science.
The state has so far failed to note that federal stipulations attached to oil and gas lease parcels don’t take into consideration 15 years of published research by wildlife biologist Hall Sawyer. The research shows such stipulations do not adequately protect wildlife from oil and gas development.
Rather than keeping its foot on the gas pedal, the BLM needs to hit the brakes on oil and gas leasing in and near migration corridors. The agency needs to take time to adhere to the best available science and to amend existing stipulations to ensure protections actually work as intended.
This year we also asked you to submit comments on BLM oil and gas lease sales, and many of you responded. Thanks to your advocacy and the urging of Gov. Matt Mead, the BLM agreed to defer the sale of nearly 5,000 surface acres of federal lease parcels that intersect with the Red Desert to Hoback mule deer migration corridor. This is a good start to defending this corridor, and it showed the BLM that Wyoming citizens are resolute in protecting the state’s critical wildlife habitat.
Thank you for staying engaged and helping us keep the promise that we owe to future generations.
— Read the Wyoming BLM Third Quarter oil and gas lease sale protest letter filed (August 11, 2018) by Wyoming Outdoor Council, National Audubon Society, The Wilderness Society, and Wyoming Wilderness Association.
If you’ve spent any time in Wyoming’s wide open-spaces, you know how it excites the senses: the song of a meadowlark darting over mountain wildflowers in summer; the smell of sagebrush freshly washed by an afternoon rain in spring; the shifting shadows on a distant snow-laced hilltop in winter.
If you’re like us, these moments probably compelled you to snap a photo — or a few dozen — including that one shot you keep returning to and remember fondly. We want to see these glimpses of your Wyoming and learn how your experiences in Wyoming’s open spaces helped define your past year? Was it a nighttime shot of stars draped over a mountain skyline, or a moment with your best friend on a hike? Share these Wyoming images and stories with us in our annual calendar contest. After reviewing all of the submissions in the fall, we’ll choose our favorites for the Wyoming Outdoor Council calendar.
HOW TO ENTER
This year, we’ll again offer you the chance to enter your photos through Instagram or email. To submit your photo(s) via Instagram, you must have a public Instagram account so that we’re able to view your submission. Upload your photo(s) and add the hashtag #MyWyoming.
To submit your photo(s) via email, send your photo(s) to claire@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org.
TERMS & CONDITIONS
Entries must be submitted between July 15, 2018, and before midnight on September 15, 2018, either via email (claire@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org) or Instagram, using the hashtag #MyWyoming. By entering, all contestants agree to release their photo to the Wyoming Outdoor Council for publication purposes. The Wyoming Outdoor Council will select the winning photos, which will then be used in the Outdoor Council’s 2019 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 2019 calendar and on the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s website to promote the annual photo contest. 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.
A big part of our work at the Outdoor Council involves tracking the actions our representative government makes on behalf of its citizens. Often, that includes asking for public records not readily available or published for broad public access.
Citizens have the right to know about activities that affect public health, including the water we use and air we breathe, as well as the myriad decisions that affect land and wildlife management in Wyoming. That’s why we’re taking a stand against an ill-conceived state policy to charge fees for public records requests.
The fee structure, created and promoted by the Wyoming Department of Information and Administration (A&I), misses the intent of a state law passed in 2014 to “streamline” responses to records requests. We believe that providing public records and governing transparently is not an “add-on” to the job of the government that citizens should have to pay for. It is a core duty of our state government. We already cover the cost to produce public records with our taxpayer dollars dedicated to support state agencies.
Understanding that a fee-for-access policy only serves to deter citizens from taking part in civic matters, we have joined with dozens of partners to push back against A&I’s flawed policy. At the same time, we are encouraging a broader discussion to find solutions that can help state agencies more efficiently respond to records requests.
We are encouraged that the legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee has agreed to take on the topic this year, and we will keep you up-to-date as the discussion progresses.
Wyoming’s fee-for-access scheme is not the only policy being pursued to distance citizens from our government’s actions. Rep. Liz Cheney has introduced a bill to slap fees on citizens who participate in BLM’s oil and gas leasing decision-making processes on public lands. An effort continues at the Wyoming Legislature to criminalize protests against so-called “critical infrastructure,” and tactics to transfer the ownership and/or management of public lands continues. These are part of a broader trend to extract citizens from our public lands heritage and to insert the Trump administration’s mandate for “energy dominance” in the West.
But we don’t have to — and must not — cede our democratic institutions and values to realize robust economies. The Wyoming-led sage grouse management plan for the West (now also under attack) is proof that bipartisan, multi-stakeholder efforts can help sustain energy, agriculture and our wildlife heritage far into the future regardless of politics. Efforts to derail robust citizen participation will fail — but only with your help.
Thank you for your continued work to help protect Wyoming’s world-class wildlife, our open spaces, clean air and water, and for joining us in demanding a government responsive to its citizens.
Hello! I’m Kristen Gunther, and I recently joined the Wyoming Outdoor Council staff as a Conservation Advocate. I’ve long admired the Outdoor Council’s powerful legacy of conservation work throughout Wyoming, and I am thrilled to join this wonderful team.
Though I’ve lived in Wyoming for almost a decade, I grew up in Maryland, near the top of the Chesapeake Bay, in the middle of a forested state park cut through by a river. The opportunity to explore public lands built my perspective of the world, even as I watched my historically rural county face increasing development pressure. By the time I departed for college, hillslopes I remembered as family farms had been paved over. It taught me how quickly you can lose touch with the legacy of a landscape, and that you can’t take open spaces and functioning ecosystems for granted. You have to fight for their future.
After completing an undergraduate degree in English, environmental studies, and biology at Bowdoin College, I moved to Cheyenne as an AmeriCorps volunteer in 2009. I fell in love with Wyoming immediately, delighting in its wide open spaces and hidden nooks. I spent most of my first couple of years in the state hiking, climbing, and camping. I laid awake all night by Crazy Woman Creek listening to the roar of the snowmelt-powered stream. I picked my way down the Outlaw Cave trail to eat lunch in one of the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang’s hideouts. I snowshoed and mountain biked in the Laramie Range, spent my first day learning to untangle a fly rod near the shadow of Elk Mountain, and learned to love getting chewed up by the rough granite of Vedauwoo.
In 2010, I moved to Laramie to pursue graduate study in creative writing. After I finished my Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Wyoming, I chose to return to science and pursue a PhD in ecology at UW with a focus on improving science communication. In particular, I was interested in strengthening communication between ecosystem scientists and the rangeland managers who incorporate emerging insights from research into new management practices on the ground. I spent much of my PhD in conversation with ranchers, Extension agents, local elected officials, Weed and Pest staff, and other decision-makers and stakeholders around the state.
That experience deepened my passion for Wyoming’s heritage and honed my appreciation for the ties that our communities have to the landscape.
It also made my commitment to advocacy stronger, and I increasingly found new footing for my belief that grassroots organizing has the power to create meaningful change. Most recently, in January of 2017, I worked on a global scale as a member of the national March for Science team. After a history-making march, I continued to serve as Director of Strategy, building lasting infrastructure to empower grassroots science advocacy and developing ongoing campaigns to connect supporters with their elected officials. The success we’ve seen from advocacy at multiple scales over the last year has helped further my dedication to empowering locally-driven engagement. It has shown me what can happen when a group of diverse stakeholders and communities come together to articulate a shared, transformative vision.
That’s why I’m so excited to join the Outdoor Council as a Conservation Advocate. I will be working directly with communities around the state on the conservation issues that unite us: protecting our public lands and the vibrant ecosystems that make Wyoming unique. I’ll also work to make sure we effectively communicate our conservation priorities to elected officials at all levels. I want the voices of Wyoming conservation advocates to be effective in decision-making that affects the quality of our environment and the future of our wild spaces.
Wyoming’s rugged beauty, vast public lands, and stunning array of habitats and ecosystems are unlike anything else in the world. Our communities live and work on these landscapes. They define our past, present, and future. I’m honored and excited to join a team committed solely to the enduring protection of Wyoming’s environment and quality of life.
Looking for a book to read in 2018? We’ve got you covered. In the coming months, if you’re a Wyoming resident, you’ll be able to head to your local library and check out a book related to natural history, the environment, or outdoor adventure that we helped recommend and that our Emily Stevens Book Fund helped purchase.
Every year since 1998, this fund has helped bring a new book to the shelves of all 23 of Wyoming’s county libraries. The fund was established by the Outdoor Council in memory of Emily Stevens, a Wilson resident and board member who served from 1989 to 1996. In the 1990s, her board service was crucial in helping us prioritize and defend public lands, raise money (she often pitched in her own), and help us remain focused on our mission.
Dan Heilig, executive director of the Outdoor Council at the time of Emily’s service, described her as “a wonderful person with a big heart.” Steff Kessler, our Program Director, knew Emily well, too, and said Emily was warm and generous. She often hosted lively events for the Outdoor Council at her Wilson home.
Emily was well-known and beloved around the state for her steadfast commitment to conservation — which is aptly honored every time a reader is introduced to, or reminded of, the great natural wonders that surround us through this book fund.
Emily moved to Wyoming from Boston in the early 1970s after falling in love with the state as a guest of the T Cross and CM ranches in Dubois and the Upper Wind River Valley. She cherished her experience there so much that she eventually bought T Cross Ranch with the intent to preserve the landscape.
Over the years, she also purchased additional land near Jackson Hole in the surrounding Teton Valley. She worked to conserve much of it and deeded the rest to Walton Ranch, which still uses this land today for its day-to-day operations. Emily also bought Iron Rock — today known as Emily’s Pond in her honor—and cleaned up the site, recognizing value of the area’s access to the nearby Snake River and ensuring that others would be able to use the land for recreation and enjoyment for years to come. In 1992, she gave the property to Teton County with a conservation easement held by the Jackson Hole Land Trust.
Emily passed away in 2001, leaving behind a legacy of conservation that ranged far and wide — from our own Snake River to the states of Arizona and New Hampshire.
Each year, we honor Emily through this book fund. An appointed fund director — this year is Jazmyn MacDonald, a longtime supporter of the Outdoor Council— develops a list of titles that focus on natural history, the environment, and outdoor adventure, and allows each county library to pick one title from this list that will best fit their patrons. The book is then purchased and delivered with a Wyoming Outdoor Council bookplate for each county and its readers to enjoy.
Anita Marple, branch manager of the Fremont County Library in Lander, said the book fund has helped the library add a beautiful, informative, unique book to their collection each year.
“We appreciate the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s commitment to providing libraries this opportunity for connecting people with great resources,” she said.
Park County Library Manager Marge Buchholz, said she barely got a chance to look at the book they chose this year — ”Where the Animals Go,” by James Cheshire — because someone had checked it out almost immediately.
“It’s a wonderful program that lets us have these beautiful books every year,” she said. “I can’t say enough great things about this program — and our patrons love it, too. They comment on the books all the time.”
Here is a list of titles that might be coming to your library soon: • “Because It Is So Beautiful: Unraveling the Mystique of the American West,” by Robert Leonard Reid • “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants,” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• “Bugged: The Insects Who Rule The World,” by David MacNeal
• “Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction,” by Mary Ellen Hannibal
• “The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature,” by J Drew Lanham
• “Mountains and Plains: The Ecology of Wyoming Landscapes, 2nd Edition,” by Dennis H. Knight, George P. Jones, William A. Reiners, and William H. Romme
• “Where the Animals Go: Tracking Wildlife with Technology,” by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti
• “Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River,” by David Owen
• “The Animal In Me: Is Very Plain to See,” by Laurie C. Tye with photos by Thomas D. Mangelsen
• “Chasing at the Surface: A Novel,” by Sharon Mentyka
• “¡Olinguito, de la A a la Z! / Olinguito, from a to Z!: Descubriendo el bosque nublado / Unveiling the Cloud Forest (English and Spanish Edition),” by Lulu Delacre
• “A Pika’s Tail,” by Sally Plumb
• “Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth,” by Oliver Jeffers
• “Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World,” by Rachel Ignotofsky
