On a Saturday evening in September, close to 100 people filed into the Blue Sage Center for the Arts in Paonia, Colorado, HCN’s longtime hometown. Our new director of philanthropy, Eric Lane, compared it to a family reunion.
With the election looming large in everyone’s mind, longtime Contributing Editor Michelle Nijhuis led a conversation about how Westerners can come together to create conservation solutions able to endure the changing winds of Washington, D.C. The talk grew out of the work that Michelle is currently spearheading in the magazine and on the website, which you can find at hcn.org/conservation-beyond-boundaries.
Panelists included Hannah Stevens, executive director of the Western Slope Conservation Center, Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Towaoc, and regenerative cattle rancher Jason Wrich.
Wrich recalled his grandfather, who had a sheep ranch in the San Luis Valley, telling him that the land and the wildlife would tell him what they needed. “Pay attention, mi hijito,” he said. It’s a lesson that inspired Wrich to build a business that is both profitable and humane, he said. “Our cattle have only one bad day — the day they go to slaughter.”
Stevens recalled moving to the North Fork Valley as a teenager and watching as the Wake Fire, which lightning started on July 4, 1994, roared across the juniper-studded mesa. Four HCN staffers narrowly escaped losing their homes. Others were not so lucky. Now, 30 years later, Stevens’ organization has applied for state funding to do a watershed-scale analysis of future wildfire risks.
Lopez-Whiteskunk, who has been active in the creation and planning of Bears Ears National Monument, reminded the audience that “co-management” — a buzzword currently in vogue to describe partnerships with Indigenous people — is not a new idea. “This is how life happened with our elders and ancestors,” she said, with different groups of people making use of land and resources during different seasons.
Our partners in the event included KVNF Mountain Grown Community Radio (which recorded the session and will make it available online) and a statewide media collaboration called Above the Noise, which seeks to bring people together for civil conversations in a divisive time. HCN friend and reader Emily Sinclair hosted a reception afterward at Paonia Books, her bookshop/coffeehouse/gathering space, where her husband, Jay Kenney, generously poured out glasses of his Clear Fork Cider.
The event, supported by the Western Colorado Community Foundation, was a wonderful way to reinforce our deep connections with a community that has nurtured HCN for many decades. It was also an example of the type of gathering we’re currently hosting around the region, working with local organizations to bring people together for conversation, camaraderie — and perhaps a few pints as well.
If you’d like to team up with us on an event in your community or have suggestions for local organizations we should talk to, please drop us a line at dearfriends@hcn.org.
New faces in the office
Paonia has always attracted an eclectic cast of characters, and we’ve been lucky to add a couple of them to our staff recently.
James Norris-Weyers joined us in July as our new customer service manager. He and his wife fell in love with the place when they moved here during the pandemic to be close to her parents. An attorney by training (and a Scot by birth), James has spent years working for nonprofits, including several international education organizations. When he’s not at the office or wrangling his two young kids, James volunteers for a few other local nonprofits.
The daughter of anthropologists, Tanya Henderson is a Westerner to the core. Born in Flagstaff, Arizona, she graduated from high school in Elko, Nevada, and college in Walla Walla, Washington. She did graduate research at Canyon de Chelly National Monument and has managed conservation-oriented nonprofits in California and Colorado. We are lucky to have her as our new customer service specialist.
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