Finding New Places to Love Through Stewardship and Protecting Them Through Sage Society
Aaron Tani, an ONDA member since 2016, regularly volunteers on stewardship trips and contributes monthly as part of the Sage Society. A Central Oregonian since 1986, Aaron has grown to love Oregon’s high desert for its vastness and the solitude found while exploring this landscape. Friends introduced Aaron to ONDA, and his first...
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2018 Volunteer of the Year
Meet Terry Butler. A search for information about Sutton Mountain led Terry Butler to ONDA. In 2014, he joined an ONDA stewardship trip in Logan Valley. By 2015, Terry’s volunteering repertoire had expanded to attending town halls, making phone calls, leading guided hikes, and helping out at events. He’s a central hub in our strong...
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Meet Michelle Smith and Sam Beebe
These ONDA members gave the classic American West road trip a public lands twist Inspired by a desire to see public lands across the West, Michelle Smith and Sam Beebe took a nearly 5-month and 16,000-mile road trip last year to better understand public lands and the current issues and communities around them. They...
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Going Public: Becoming a Public Land Leader
Brittany Leffel hosted a Public Land Leader gathering in December and wrote about her experience “going public”. Behind every beloved trail is a crew of stewards working to preserve the trail. Likewise, behind every wilderness area and national forest are people speaking up for our public lands. I’ve always taken pride in my...
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Species Spotlight: Mountain Mahogany
Written by LeeAnn Kriegh Trees live their lives on a different timescale than ours, so it helps to slow ourselves down to fully appreciate them. Certainly, a shrubby little tree like curlleaf mountain-mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius) isn’t going to catch our eye if we’re racing past along the trail. But take time for a closer...
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We asked, you answered: Keep delivering conservation wins
The results of our most recent member survey In early November, we surveyed our members to check in on the work that matters most to you. Nearly 300 of you responded. Thank you! Whether it was in multiple choice questions or the open-ended answers, the prevailing theme was: “keep it up!” Here’s what we...
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Sage Society: Sustaining Desert Conservation
Retired science teacher Scott Bowler is a proud member of ONDA’s Sage Society, the community of advocates and donors who live their values by sustaining critical conservation efforts year-round with monthly contributions. We recently spoke with Scott about his decades-long commitment to sustaining Oregon conservation efforts through volunteering, advocacy, and the Sage Society. ONDA: Tell...
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Kirk Richardson: Alice Elshoff Award winner
For more than a decade, Kirk Richardson has been a strong voice for protecting Oregon’s high desert. He’s served on the Oregon Natural Desert Association Board of Directors, helped dream up the Live Monumental effort to protect areas like the Owyhee through his position at KEEN Footwear, and now is the recipient of the...
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Climate change in the sagebrush sea
Dr. Megan Creutzburg is a researcher at Oregon State University’s Institute for Natural Resources, where she provides technical coordination for the Oregon Sage Grouse Conservation Partnership (SageCon). With climate marches happening across the nation on Saturday, ONDA’s Corinne Handelman sat down with Megan for an interview about her research on sagebrush landscapes and climate change...
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Celebrating 30 years of high desert conservation
For three decades, ONDA has been a strong, consistent voice for Oregon’s high desert. It all began in 1987 with extraordinary people concerned about an extraordinary place, and today has blossomed into the only organization that works exclusively on behalf of eastern Oregon’s high desert public lands and waterways. It’s been more than three...
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