by Sentinel Staff
Wet Mountain Valley Outdoors (WMVO) has a Board and is made up of a handful of teams. This week we are unpacking the WMVO leadership and teams. Answering the questions; Who makes up the leadership, and what experiences do they bring to the table? Who serves on the established teams? Is there room for more community voices and future opportunities for discussion?
The Board of the WMVO includes Bob Fulton, Sally Strom, John Anderson, John Van Doren, and Lucas Epp. Epp and Fulton are the only WMVO Board members not also on the Trails for All Board. The Planning Team is made up of John Van Doren, Andrew Todd, and Shelly Larson.  All of whom serve on the Board of Directors of Trails for All.
In an outreach effort to bring varied voices to the table the Core Team was created. Members of the Core Team are fluctuating somewhat, but currently the members include: Destiny Chapman, USFS; Justin Krall, CPW; Rob Bidner; Sudzy Benesch, Ranching; Kevin Day, Wetmore representative; Yates McConnell, ARWC – Middle Arkansas Watershed Coordinator; Bianca Trenker; Buck Wenzel, Silver Cliff Mayor; Lucas Epp, Custer County Commissioner; Sally Strom, Trails for All; Gina Graham, local grant writer. Sara Shields and Wendy Rusk were invited to attend the last Core Team meeting in order to share their local ranching and conservation perspectives, no word on whether they will continue on the Core Team.
According to John Van Doren, the WMVO is focusing its effort to network with organizations and additional community members. The organization is hoping to make connections, develop relation-ships, collaborate and build trust through one conversation at a time. WMVO is fully functioning as a 501(C3). Grants have been applied for and awarded. The current grants are for capacity building and outreach facilitation. * Shelly Larson owns Jo Studio, Inc. which receives grant funds as a consultant for WMVO’s Marketing, Public Relations and Communications efforts.
Van Doren says, “It is up to our community members to bring community derived and focused projects to the table for implementation grant funding.” Projects that fall within Colorado’s Outdoor Strategy framework are most likely to be awarded funding by the state.
While the WMVO’s stated mission is to plan and implement Colorado’s Out-door Strategy, the WMVO will also likely apply for additional grants outside of the RPI’s Outdoor Strategy framework if local interests dictate. This means there are likely other funding opportunities for projects. A WMVO board member referred to a recent Sentinel letter to the editor about the importance of forest health saying, “these are exactly the things we need to talk about. We are decades behind in the management of our forests. It’s important that these issues are brought up for discussion and are considered for project plans.”
What things in our valley do you want to see sustained or improved? If you had grant dollars to spend, how and where would you spend them? According to the WMVO Planning Team, the opportunity for residents to share their ideas and help influence outcomes is in becoming part of the process by attending meetings, joining the Community Team or an Action Team. Bring your ideas and a friend to the table at the next WMVO meeting October 8th, at 5:30 p.m. at Lange Hall.
The WMVO’s “North Star” Goals are Conservation, Restoration and Recreation. Do those North Star goals expand to include working with our community to defeat ballot initiatives like Initiative 82 (Working Title: Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation Commission) that are potentially harmful to our rural land use rights among other things?
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*And update was made to indicate that Shelly Larson is not on the board of WMVO, and is a consultant to the organization.