Montana Wilderness Association DBA Wild Montana
Keep it Wild!
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Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Montana is home to grizzly bears and wolverine, cutthroat trout and pronghorn antelope. It's known for its big skies, blue ribbon streams, vast prairies, and snowcapped peaks. Montanans and visitors alike love that Montana has room to roam -- for people and animals. But these things we love about Montana won't stay that way. We amplify the voices of people of all stripes, who stand together to speak-up in support of wildlands, wildlife, and waterways. Without our work, our public lands would be criss-crossed by roads and riddled with industrial development, and motors and machines would replace the "hush of the land" people and wildlife need. Wild Montana's collaborative approach and strong foundation of grassroots support sets us apart from any others working on public land conservation in Montana.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Protect the Wild
We work from the ground up bringing people and communities together around policies, proposals, and legislation that protect wild public lands and waters from degradation and irresponsible development. Our work safeguards wildlands, secures wildlife habitat and migration corridors, and keeps headwaters and streams running cold, clear, and connected.
CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES
Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act: the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act will add nearly 80,000 aces to the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat, and Mission Mountains Wilderness Areas and safeguard the four most crucial tributaries of the storied Blackfoot River, helping sustain the health of wildlife, native trout populations, and the river itself. It will also bolster the local outdoor recreation economy by preserving a rugged mountain biking area and opening a new area for snowmobiling near Ovando. Wild Montana played a pivotal role in crafting the BCSA and is now building statewide and national support for getting the bill passed in Congress and signed into law. And we’re getting the job done: according to the 2020 University of Montana Public Lands Survey, 75% of Montanans support the BCSA.
Gallatin Forest Partnership: The Gallatin Forest Partnership is poised to permanently protect more than 250,000 acres in the Madison and Gallatin ranges, just northwest of Yellowstone National Park. It’s a community-developed solution to safeguard wildlife, clean water, and outdoor recreation and connect the vast wildlands that still define this fastest-growing corner of Montana. Wild Montana is one of the founding members of the GFP, and we’re rallying community support for federal legislation to turn major elements of the proposal into law. Over 1,000 community members, business owners, recreationists, and conservationists have endorsed the proposal.
Lincoln Prosperity Proposal: Five years in the making, the Lincoln Prosperity Proposal (LPP) breaks through decades of conflict and logjam among interest groups and offers solutions for managing public lands that will protect those lands, boost local economies, create jobs, and enhance outdoor recreation. The proposal calls for enlarging the Scapegoat Wilderness by 16,000 acres and for designating 63,000 acres as conservation management areas, and the creation of the first new wilderness area Montana has seen in nearly 40 years – the 40,000-acre Nevada Mountain Wilderness, located about 25 miles northwest of Helena (as the crow flies). All of these conservation measures would help secure wildlife habitat along the Continental Divide, a crucial corridor that allows animals to migrate between larger wild regions, as they must to thrive.
Confront Climate Change
Our work focuses on the conservation of large landscapes across Montana that play crucial roles in mitigating the climate crisis – as habitat for imperiled plant species and as pathways for wildlife moving in response to a changing climate.
We advocate for federal policy and legislation that also keep Montana’s wildlands intact, connected, and resilient, and that enable wildlife populations, plant communities, and human communities to endure and thrive in the face of climate change.
CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES
Oil and Gas: America’s broken oil and gas leasing system stands in the way of conserving millions of acres of wild public lands and waters across Montana. Forty-eight percent of all leases issued in Montana since 1987, covering more than one million acres, have been sold for $2 an acre or less. These leases have resulted in hardly any oil or gas production, little revenue, few jobs, and scant benefit to anyone except those who buy these leases on the cheap to pad their investment portfolios. We're working to reform these outdated policies.
The Badger-Two Medicine: Adjacent to Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, and the Blackfeet Reservation, the Badger-Two Medicine is sacred to the Pikuni (Blackfeet), who have been hunting, gathering plants, and holding ceremonies here since time immemorial. Wild Montana is supporting our Pikuni partners in their efforts to secure the future of the 130,000-acre area, which has long been threatened by oil and gas leasing. As the last unprotected parcel of federal land along the Rocky Mountain Front, the Badger-Two Medicine deserves to be protected from industrial development once and for all.
Enhance Public Land Access
We build grassroots support for funding and policies that enable communities to benefit from and enjoy public lands and waters. We maintain and steward trails through public lands by organizing volunteer projects. And we stand at the forefront of the pro-public lands movement in Montana, repelling efforts to privatize and exploit those lands.
CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES
Lower Yellowstone River: Wild Montana helped unite community members to support the Lower Yellowstone River Coalition’s proposal and played a pivotal role in the Montana Legislature’s decision to appropriate $4 million dollars for new and improved access and habitat protections. Now, we’re stepping up to make the proposal a reality.
State Policy: We’re making sure public lands issues are front and center in every election and legislative session. Together, we can support our public lands champions, hold lawmakers accountable when they support bad public lands legislation, and create a political climate in which supporting public lands and conservation issues is non-negotiable.
Volunteer Trail Crew: Every summer, volunteers team up to maintain trails on public lands across Montana with our Volunteer Trail Crew (VTC). A VTC hitch is a chance to make lifelong friends, explore new wildlands, and give back to the trails that connect you to the places you love. Our highly experienced professional trail crew leaders facilitate projects ranging from single-day frontcountry trips to weeklong backcountry adventures, and every VTC outing is free to join. Each year, we tackle trail projects in areas we’re working to protect.
Help Communities Thrive
We advocate for public land policies and legislation that support communities' health and economic, cultural, and spiritual wellbeing. We’re also working to make public lands more welcoming to all people.
CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES
Crazy Mountains: Since time immemorial, the Apsáalooke have held a profound connection to these mountains. We’re pushing the Forest Service to manage them accordingly.
Lower Yellowstone River: The Lower Yellowstone River Coalition is building community consensus to establish new recreation access and to protect wildlife habitat along 175 miles of the lower Yellowstone River in eastern Montana, a stunning stretch of the longest free-flowing river in the continental United States.
Ruby Valley Strategic Alliance: Wild Montana is proud to be a founding member of the Ruby Valley Strategic Alliance, a group of conservation organizations and ranchers dedicated to preserving the mosaic of wildlands and working ranches that cover this corner of southwest Montana.
Where we work
External reviews
Photos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of free participants on field trips
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Enhance Public Land Access
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This data represents the number of participants who we brought outdoors for a free, volunteer-led hike through our Wilderness Walks education program.
Number of people we mobilized to take one or more actions on behalf of Montana's public lands by submitting public comment, contacting a legislator or agency official, writing an LTE or Op-Ed, etc.
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of Wild Montana's public land advocates who contacted legislators via phone and email during the state legislative session.
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
2020 - 2024 goal: Protect 2.4 million acres of diverse landscapes across Montana.
#1. Pass legislation that protects nearly one million acres as new Wilderness and other conservation designations by working collaboratively with local community leaders, MWA supporters, priority stakeholders, and our congressional delegation.
#2. Engage in key agency planning processes to protect over 1.4 million acres of wildlands as recommended Wilderness and other conservation designations.
#3. Defend the conservation legacy of public lands by defeating legislation and policies that eliminate wilderness and conservation protections, promote inappropriate disposal of public lands, or interfere with effective management of public lands.
#4. Maintain the integrity of and access to public lands by advancing state and federal policy measures, including ensuring adequate resources are available, and conducting on-the-ground stewardship in priority landscapes.
These goals build on MWA's strong foundation of grassroots support that sets us apart from any others working on public land conservation in Montana. We have among the greatest reach of any of Montana’s conservation organizations, and we’re skilled at mobilizing these supporters to effect change.
It also leverages our ability to navigate policy wins at the local, county, state, and federal level. We’re able to bend the ear of county commissioners, and we’ve been known to turn out 100s of local conservationists on short notice. We navigate the halls of the Capitol, activate our members to contact legislators, and recruit powerful voices from trade groups, influencing how bills are crafted and what makes it into law. At the federal level, we’re taking on fights in new landscapes, and with national significance. We continue to pursue protections for the Badger-Two Medicine, where the outcome of a final legal battle in the courts, and a conservation solution that includes Pikuni (Blackfeet) co-management, will have national implications. We’re adding new programs to address climate resilience and to reform antiquated oil and gas leasing practices, stretching our capacity to address critical issues.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
1. Identify shared values and shared solutions. In each community where we work, we bring together a range of interests to discuss challenges, identify shared values, and build solutions that benefit wildlands and communities. For our landscape-based campaigns, these conversations happen around tables, on foot, or while shearing sheep. For state policy efforts, these shared values are more often identified via statewide survey and public meetings seeking to learn Montanans’ perceptions of our public lands. Or, for our defensive campaigns, we may turn to Montanans’ collective identity to identify shared values internally, and then lean on communications strategies to elevate extant values.
2. Build a movement. Ultimately, we seek to achieve lasting policy outcomes, and that can only be achieved when we multiply our support a thousand fold – the “grassroots” essential to our work – that builds political will. We use on-the-ground and digital tactics to build our lists, expanding the network of people we can engage when action is needed. And we educate the public via Wilderness Walks and community events, social media and short films. These tactics build the awareness and the buy-in critical to gaining political will for policy shifts.
3. Showcase support. For each campaign, we demonstrate a groundswell of support publicly via letters to the editor and opinion editorials, as well as paid media like full page newspaper ads, strategically timed billboards, yard signs, and radio and TV spots. We call on our networks to take action, leveraging a growing chorus of voices to call our congressional delegation, submit comments on draft management plans, or attend a rally in the Capitol rotunda. And we gain the support of influential bodies – for example, gaining county commissioners’ support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund or for collaborative conversations around Wilderness Study Areas.
4. Influence decision makers. Backed by a groundswell of support that cannot be ignored, we make it clear to decision makers that when they support the policies we propose, they’ll have Montanans’ and Americans' support. We engage a range of influential “grasstops” voices to convey these messages – whether by attending a hearing at the state legislature or a meeting in D.C., or taking staffers on a field tour. We share the thousands of citizen endorsements we’ve gained, and convey the backing of local and county elected officials.
5. Effect change. This is the ultimate goal - legislators introduce legislation, land managers enact management plans, and decision makers/elected officials listen to Montanans and all Americans. At the behest of the grassroots, collaborative movement we’ve built, decision makers enact conservation policies that benefit wildlife and wild places.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
This 2.4 million acre goal builds upon MWA’s strong foundation of grassroots support that sets us apart from any others working on public land conservation in Montana. We have among the greatest reach of any of Montana’s conservation organizations: 52,000 supporters via email, phone, and mail, and more than 60,000 on social media. And we’re skilled at mobilizing these supporters to effect change: 850 pro-conservation comments on the BLM’s Lewistown Resource Management Plan, 3,000 Montanans asking our congressional delegation for a more collaborative resolution to Wilderness Study Areas, and hundreds packing county commission chambers.
It also leverages our ability to navigate policy wins at the local, county, state, and federal level. We’re able to bend the ear of county commissioners in places like Big Horn, and gain the support of city mayors in places like Belt. We’ve been known to turn out 100s of local conservationists on short notice, ensuring unsuspecting commissioners recognize their constituents’ calls for conservation. At the state legislature, we navigate the halls, activate our members to contact legislators, and recruit powerful voices from trade groups, influencing how bills are crafted and what makes it to the governor’s desk. At the federal level, we’re taking on fights in new landscapes, and with national significance. We continue to pursue protections for the Badger-Two Medicine, with that path for protection even clearer with a recent federal court victory, and a conservation solution that includes Pikuni (Blackfeet) co-management, will have national implications. We’re adding new programs to address climate resilience and to reform antiquated oil and gas leasing practices, stretching our capacity to address critical issues.
We’re also shifting how we operate. As a respected leader within Montana’s conservation community, we recognize that we have a responsibility not just to our own mission, but to shape the future of conservation here and across the west. With this in mind, we’ve made a commitment to address equity and justice. Internally, this work is already resulting in improved hiring processes and internal communications, and increased awareness of unconscious bias. Externally, this commitment is broadening our approach to collaboration as we reflect on who’s included and who’s excluded, expanding the scope of who’s speaking at the table. Importantly, it’s resulting in strengthened and expanded partnerships with Native American communities as we listen to and speak up in support of their priorities.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Over the past several years, longstanding, protected, natural areas have come under attack: national monuments, wilderness study areas, recommended wilderness, areas of critical environmental concern, and roadless areas. Changes in national priorities have elevated resource extraction and intensive recreation on our public lands, straining or reversing our environmental laws and impacting management decisions on the ground. MWA’s local community relationships and commitment to collaboration have allowed us to weather the storm, and we’re stronger for it.
In recent year, some of our biggest achievements are the result of transforming this defense into proactive opportunities rooted in collaborative conservation, mobilization, strategic communications, and our ability to leverage these strengths across local, county, state, and federal issues:
- For the first time in nearly 40 years, there’s not a single oil and gas lease in the Badger-Two Medicine.
- The Custer Gallatin and Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forests’ management plans are likely to incorporate collaborative agreements that provide 20-30 year protections for the headwaters of Bozeman’s drinking water supply, important wolverine denning areas on the slopes of Nevada Mountain, and grizzly bear habitat adjacent to the Scapegoat Wilderness.
- In partnership with Apsaalooke (Crow) leaders, we’ve made it clear to the Forest Service that the cultural values of the Awaxaawippíia (Crazy Mountains) cannot be ignored.
- The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act, backed by more than 120 businesses and community leaders and 75% of Montanans, is poised to protect more than 80,000 acres, including the most important lynx breeding grounds in the lower-48 states.
- In the state legislature, MWA led the successful grassroots advocacy effort to pass the first broad-based state-level recreation and conservation funding bill in decades. That bill, SB24, established a new trails fund to build and repair trails and other outdoor infrastructure and is expected to generate $2 million per year for trails, state parks, and fishing access sites.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Montana Wilderness Association DBA Wild Montana
Board of directorsas of 01/23/2024
Tim Lynch
Debo Powers
Larry Epstein
Andrew McKean
Mark Connell
Camille Consolvo
Shane Doyle
Jeanette Hall
Patrtick Holmes
Kate Kendall
Lauren Murray
Tom Ross
Robin Saha
Brian Upton
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
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Race & ethnicity
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Equity strategies
Last updated: 01/14/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.