Listen to naturalist, outdoor educator, and new WOC member Day Scott talk about her journey from Los Angeles to Wyoming and it’s clear she’s hardwired to forge connections and build community.
In the six months since moving to Lander, Day has become a regular volunteer and photographer with a pet rescue organization, helped out at the farmers’ market, served as a wilderness first responder for local events, and had her wildlife photography featured on the Only in Wyoming media company’s Facebook page. The connections she’s made have led to continuous house- and dog-sitting opportunities, a marketing job at NOLS, dinner invitations from nearby campers, and, most recently, to meeting a group of likeminded people eager to learn the ins and outs of advocacy.
Last month, Day graduated from WOC’s inaugural Conservation Leadership Institute. Of everything she learned, she was especially interested to discover that nearly all the presenters over the eight-week course highlighted one theme as the basis of successful advocacy: relationship building. That term is used a lot these days, “but it really is the basis of life,” she said. “It’s so important. This is it!”
Day moved to Lander last spring, after taking a class with the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS. She’d been living in L.A. for more than a decade, where she’d worked as a technical writer for a major social media company and then as a naturalist and manager of environmental education and outreach for a state ecological reserve. She also spearheaded a wetlands restoration project and, most recently, had started an environmental-based summer camp for kids. She enjoyed her work, but needed a change from the crowds and the pace.
She found that change in Wyoming. Soon after coming to Lander, Day drove through Sinks Canyon and up to a lake on the Shoshone National Forest. “I literally cried. I thought, how can this exist here? It’s just here and I have access to it. And how can people in L.A. survive and be happy when they don’t have this?”
Day admitted that in the beginning she didn’t know what to expect from Lander. She was nervous about how she’d be perceived as a black woman in a predominantly white small town. “At first, I got a lot of stares,” she said. But she pushed through the discomfort of being alone, and began making friends and connections. Soon, word was out that she needed a place to live, and one thing led to another. “Someone let me stay at their house who didn’t even know me — turned over their dogs and house to me … that gave me such a sense of community and total trust. And that’s happened here more than once.”
That sense of community, coupled with Wyoming’s awe-inspiring landscapes, have made Day feel she’s found her home here. “I feel like I need Lander in my life,” she said. As for why she joined WOC, she said that after belonging to bigger, national groups, she was excited to be part of a local, statewide conservation organization. “When I found out about WOC and what they do, making a difference just seemed easier.”
Time outside is important to Wyoming Outdoor Council members Katie Hogarty and Bryon Lee — whether it’s just sitting (without a cell phone) at Sweetwater Rocks and taking in the smells and sounds, walking their dog in the open space next to their Laramie home, or celebrating a wedding anniversary with a backpacking trip in Wyoming’s high country.
“Wyoming has connected me so deeply in my soul to a place,” Katie said recently, noting that while that may sound hokey, it’s true.
Katie and Bryon have been active Outdoor Council members for nearly a decade. “Wyoming is all about relationships,” Katie said. “You can inspire people [here]. I see the Outdoor Council do that all the time. You have a diverse board and a diverse group of supporters. You are able to inspire actions through thoughtful research and thoughtful approaches.”
Bryon agrees. “The importance of the work you all do — it inspires people to act, and act with future generations in mind,” he said.
Katie, a former policy analyst for Gov. Dave Freudenthal, is the Laramie program director for Wyoming Climb and a member of the Wyoming State Bar. She also serves on the Board of Equal Justice Wyoming and volunteers with Wyoming Public Radio. Bryon is a Laramie school counselor who’s active in Big Brothers, Big Sisters.
They lead busy professional lives, to be sure. But they also carve out plenty of time for outdoor activities. In fact, they spent much of this past July outside — starting with a Fourth of July hike up Medicine Bow Peak. Later that month, Bryon joined 350 other cyclists for the Tour de Wyoming ride along portions of the Red Desert to Hoback mule deer migration corridor (and donned WOC-sponsored felt antlers in honor of the “herd”) before meeting up with Katie in Jackson to go backpacking.
Katie and Bryon see the state’s outdoors and vast, intact wildlife habitats as central to Wyoming’s identity. They frequently respond to WOC calls to action because they recognize that sound information paired with a personal message to a decision maker or agency staffer can make all the difference when it comes to protecting the places they love to fish, bike, and hike.
But their support of conservation and the Outdoor Council’s efforts doesn’t end there. Bryon has made it a habit to give gift memberships to nieces and nephews for birthdays and other occasions — a great opportunity to discuss the importance of Wyoming’s environmental health and outdoor heritage with a younger generation.
“We may not see the smiles on the faces of future generations who will benefit from the work that the Outdoor Council does today,” Bryon said. “To be willing to step up and take on this cause, it’s extremely important.”
One Outdoor Council honor eludes Bryon, however. He still hasn’t earned a spot in one of our calendars showcasing photos of Wyoming. “One of my lifetime goals is to get a picture in the calendar,” he said. “Every year I take a shot, and say this is the one!”
Ask any Wyoming Outdoor Council staffer and they’ll tell you: Protecting what’s best about Wyoming is a team effort.
From removing illegal fencing that harms wildlife, to securing laws that better protect drinking water and air quality, to convincing decision-makers that some landscapes are simply too special to develop, each of the hard-won successes the Outdoor Council has enjoyed since 1967 has come only because members, citizens, and partners came together to stand up for the places and values they love.
Longtime staffer Steff Kessler recalls two such successes—and the hard work of everyone involved.
1992: “We didn’t want our state to turn into a dumping ground.”
In the early 1990s, developers were eyeing Wyoming as the next best place to build in-ground facilities to house low-level radioactive waste.
“[The Wyoming Outdoor Council] learned about this proposal at the last minute, during the first day of a 20-day budget legislative session,” Steff recalled. “We only had four weeks to understand this waste stream, its severity, and what it would include.”
As Outdoor Council staffers scrambled to learn more about the proposal, it became clear that to protect the state and the health of its people, we and everyone involved needed to better understand the regulatory process itself. Given the potential risks, though, along with the state’s lack of experience regulating radioactive waste, staff decided to act quickly to prevent the proposal from being fast-tracked through the Legislature without proper permitting or environmental preparation, study, or review. The best course of action: establish a moratorium.
In order to do that, however, the Outdoor Council needed to generate a groundswell of public support.
But how?
The first step, back in the days before the internet, was to activate the membership “phone tree.” The phone tree—which included hundreds of citizens—spurred momentum, as members began calling more and more people across the state to spread the word. But what really got things rolling was a full-page ad in the Sunday edition of the Casper Star-Tribune.
“The ad was basically a call to arms, asking people to call or fax their state senators, and call or fax the governor’s office, and oppose the bill,” Steff said.
The day after the ad ran, the bill came up for a vote in the Wyoming State Senate. Steff recalls that as she waited in the gallery with a few other folks to hear news of the bill’s fate, she and her companions were summoned unexpectedly to the office of then-Governor Mike Sullivan.
There, they were told that the volume of faxes and phone calls coming in to oppose the bill had “broken” both the fax machine and the direct line to Governor Sullivan’s office.
“It was a great example of working with our members and allies, and reaching out to the public to give them the info to chime in,” Steff said. “The general public did not want our state turned into a dumping ground. We knew Wyoming people did not want this here.”
As a result of the tireless efforts of the Outdoor Council, its members, conservation allies, and citizens, the moratorium on low-level radioactive waste storage was added to the Wyoming Environmental Quality Act in 1992. To this day, it requires any applicants for commercial radioactive waste management facility permits to pay a nonrefundable $100,000 fee and to submit a notice of intent to file at least 10 months prior to submission—effectively keeping such projects from being fast-tracked.
2016: “Your favorite place to hike or fish could someday belong to a person who fences it off, and you’d never get to go there again.”
Fast-forward two decades to 2013, when the Wyoming State Legislature began to rumble with plans for legislation to allow the transfer of ownership of federal lands in Wyoming to the state.
The main concern with transferring federal ownership to the state is the risk that these public lands could be privatized—essentially auctioned off to the highest bidder.
“That basically means that your favorite place to hike or fish could belong to a person who fences it off, and you’d never get to go there again,” Steff explained.
Not a great outcome for a state like Wyoming, where nearly half of our land is public, and where tourism and outdoor recreation comprise the second-largest and fastest-growing economic sector.
For three years straight, lawmakers tried to push some variety of land-grab bill through the Wyoming State Legislature. The Outdoor Council found itself constantly beating back those efforts. Then, in 2016, groups from throughout Wyoming and outdoor enthusiasts of all stripes began to take a concerted, organized stand against these efforts.
“We felt that this was an attack on public lands, public access, and all kinds of conservation values like water quality and wildlife habitat,” Steff said. “We also knew that, throughout the West, there is a growing movement to take public lands away from the public and develop them more for special interests.”
In November of 2016, 400 people showed up to a public lands rally in Casper as part of Keep it Public, Wyoming—a diverse statewide coalition of nonprofit organizations, businesses, and groups who collectively support the idea of keeping federal public lands in Wyoming in public hands.
Public lands rally in Casper (Nov. 2016)
Public lands rally in Casper (Nov. 2016)
The timing couldn’t have been better: the following week, a legislative committee was slated to consider another land-grab bill—this one, an attempt to amend Wyoming’s constitution to pave the way for state takeover of federal public lands.
Energized by the Casper rally, 100 Wyomingites showed up to the meeting in Riverton to oppose this draft constitutional amendment. When legislators turned a deaf ear to the citizens and instead opted to discuss the amendment at a later date, Keep it Public, Wyoming leaders encouraged its members and supporters to testify at the capitol. But again, when they showed up in Cheyenne, 150 strong, lawmakers told them the committee would not hear public comment on the amendment itself.
The result? Well, you can see for yourself:
By the time the 2017 legislative session began, the public had expressed so much opposition for the bill that the senate president killed it himself.
“This is a great example of the Wyoming Outdoor Council understanding the politics of the state, and of our ability to be nimble,” Steff said. “We really wanted to bring people together with common values, based on our love for public lands and the access and quality of life they provide for Wyoming citizens. As a result of that, we have a huge, diverse group. That group really sent a message to the Legislature, loud and clear.”
The Keep It Public, Wyoming coalition is going strong and has become a powerful voice for keeping public lands in public hands. This fall, they’ve held three successful rallies across the state—in Laramie, Jackson, and Sheridan—to keep citizens engaged and informed about public lands and the threats they face in Wyoming.
If you are not a part of the Wyoming Outdoor Council but you love Wyoming’s public lands, value its clean air and clean water, and choose to live here because of the quality of life these things afford, we’d love for you to join us. Our success and the protection of Wyoming’s future comes from the strength in our numbers.
Click here to join, or continue your involvement with, the Wyoming Outdoor Council. With your support, there’s no limit to the ways we can work together and protect this wild, one-of-a-kind place we all love.
