Message from outgoing chapter President, Tom Fleischner

We solicited input from all of you at the beginning of the summer regarding new board members. Because so many people were heading into the field at that time, we delayed our formal announcement of those results until now. It gives me great pleasure to announce the election of Matt Johnson, who works with the USGS Colorado Plateau Station, as our new President. Ethan Aumack of Grand Canyon Trust takes over Matt’s former position as Treasurer, and, Kim Crumbo of the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council becomes our new Conservation Chair. These three join an outstanding group of peers on the Board: Allison Jones continues as Vice-President, Shawn Newell as Secretary, and David Mattson as Agency Liaison. It’s a great group! It may sound like a cliché, but I truly did enjoy working with them.

I’d like to acknowledge the tremendous job done by Paul Beier as Conservation Chair for the past several years. Paul steps down for a well-deserved rest from work on the Board, but—indicative of his deep commitment to the Chapter and the Plateau—he is still coordinating our special paper session at the November conference at NAU. Thank you, Paul, for being such a source of stability and good humor while this chapter has grown increasingly strong.

I step down from three years as chapter President with a strong sense of satisfaction—both because I have the utmost confidence in the ongoing, capable leadership of Matt Johnson and the rest of the board, and because I feel we have been successful in nurturing this organization into an increasingly vital voice for conservation in this region. My gratitude to all of you for breathing life into this chapter. As always, many thanks for working on behalf of the Colorado Plateau, this remarkable heart of our continent.

For wildness,

Tom Fleischner