Announcements:
Sunny Kellerman brought us up-to-date on husband Harry’s health condition, which is improving. She had two announcements: the district conference is going to be in El Paso on April 24-26. One of the things they want from us is an obituary about Kate Watson that can be used for the memorial service on the Sunday of the District Conference. She asked that those in attendance who knew Kate to meet with her after the meeting because she is going to write the obituary to send in to the District. The second thing-
for the next ten weeks, she is the district’s champion for a project called the Epic Day of Service happening on May 17 which includes two zones, 60 districts. It doesn’t have to be a big project, can visit a nursing home, pick-up trash, etc. There is a website to register our project, and she is available to answer questions. She passed out a flyer for each table. Jim Callender said that he spoke to Kathy Eaton and got an update on Bill Evatt who has had open heart surgery. Kathy will be in Tucson for another 2-3 weeks.
Jim also brought up the WNMU scholarships. The club voted last year to dissolve the scholarships because of the service charge the Foundation charges to keep it. And with students now getting free tuition, applications are sometimes not received. We have 39
applicants for the money that is there, over $4,000. That is what we need to award to clear out the account. We can give it out in any amount that we want to. All these applicants filled out a “Service Above Self” essay letter. These are undergrad and graduate students. The grad students have no access to 
the "opportunity scholarships". After talking to Peter Falley, it was Jim and Peter’s thought to have graduate students’ applications sent to us and award our scholarships to those graduate students. There are five members of the committee, but Jim said he would like others to join him. This has to be done by end of March.
Ray Goellner gave a brief update on a possible future meeting location. He is waiting to hear back from Robert Whittaker to see if we can meet in the hospital conference room. On March 25 we will
go through the options and vote.

 

Ray introduced Travis Perry  (shown in the picture at left with Megan Perry at left and Rachel Sallese at right), President and Founder of Natural Curiosity. In 2021 Natural Curiosity purchased Hermosa, a ghost town previously part of the Ted Turner Ranch. It is the base of their mission which is to provide conservation education, biological research, wilderness stewardship and primitive skills to create conservation education leaders. Their vision is an inclusive, conservation-minded world, empowered with knowledge and inspired by nature. Through conservation research, their wilderness coordinator discovered a rare plant that was previously only known at Emory Pass. They also have a long term puma research project which started in 2008. They use their research as a resource to give their students hands-on practical experience to learn how to become wildlife biologists and ecologists. Through wilderness stewardship they have worked on over 40 miles of trails, either reopening some that had not been used in a long while or doing maintenance on existing trails, and
supporting trail crews from various organizations. Through conservation education they have given many young people the opportunity to explore the wonders of nature. This is a
component of the research they do. Some of the educational programs currently available: wilderness program of three weeks beginning in May, the Wild Semester which is taught for an
entire fall semester, with twelve weeks of instruction at Hermosa and three weeks in Africa. Money generated from this program is used to support South African students. There is also an
outdoors summer camp for disadvantaged children. They have hosted an Owls (Outdoorsy Women Learning Survival skills) course
and will teach puma ecology for a WILL class at Hermosa this weekend. Moving forward, there is still a lot of renovation and repair needed for Hermosa. The plan is to expand educational programs and training to include and reach more people, expand the trail restoration footprint and stewardship, and ultimately
create economic stimulus and opportunity in New Mexico by connecting New Mexicans and others to this huge vast resource in the Gila National forest and the Aldo Leopold wilderness.

 

After a question and answer period, meeting was adjourned.