Our History: 2003

Former Idaho governor and U.S. Secretary of Interior Cecil Andrus is featured in a Trout Unlimited ad on behalf of wilderness. Courtesy of TU

As federal decisionmakers continued their assaults on the environment, we worked with our grantees and our colleagues in the funding community to redouble our efforts. We developed a three-pronged approach, primarily through increased "general support" grants to: educate the public on the dismantling of bedrock environmental laws at the federal level (such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Forest Management Act), defend against erosion of landmark environmental protections at the regional level (such as the Northwest Forest Plan), and help all of our grantees engage more effectively with allies at the local, state and national level.

Collaboration among foundations helped stimulate and support the creation of new efforts, including the United Forest Defense Campaign and the United Endangered Species Campaign. These initiatives reflected a heightened level of coordination among national organizations and their partners at the state and local level.

As we talked with our grantees and reflected on the many challenges we all faced in doing our work, we were struck by the sense of a growing polarization between the "environmental community" and many of the constituencies we all hoped to reach. To explore this further, we asked the communications firm of MacWilliams, Cosgrove and Smith to share their thoughts about how conservationists could be more effective. This resulted in a memo that we shared with our grantees; through ONE/NW, we helped to host an interactive dialogue among leaders working in different communities and organizations about this topic.

Grantmaking Highlights

With heightened public concern surrounding the protection of bedrock environmental laws, we provided significant support to Earthjustice, an invaluable legal advocate and resource for groups at the local, regional and national level.

Our deep commitment to engaging broader constituencies in conservation work led to a second year of funding to Trout Unlimited to work with its membership, and others, to protect important fish and wildlife habitat from inappropriate energy and hardrock mining development on public lands. The strength of TU's effort in 2003 prompted us to give even greater support to the organization in 2004.

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