Land protection

If you’ve taken a hike anywhere within an hour’s drive of Seattle, chances are, you have Jim Ellis to thank for it. A legendary civic leader who passed away in 2019 at age 98, Ellis was the force behind an extraordinary range of public projects throughout the Puget Sound region. As a young...

Brianne Parker still remembers the conversation that sparked the outdoor education movement in Huntington, Vermont. It was five years ago and a parent at Brewster-Pierce Memorial School told Brianne, a kindergarten teacher there, about a public radio segment that extolled the benefits of getting...

On a warm afternoon in early fall, red-tailed hawks swooped low over fields of soybean on Firetown Road in Simsbury, Connecticut. Four abandoned barns, their weathered facades gleaming silver in the sun, stood by the roadside, vestiges of the Connecticut River Valley’s once-thriving tobacco...

Each winter, Janet Drake ventures out from her home in Phoenix to hunt in the Sky Islands. This remote region of southern Arizona is named for the isolated mountain ranges that punctuate expanses of grasslands and canyons. Differences in rainfall and temperature between mountains and valleys...