Jon Marvel - Longtime activist will retire as Western Watersheds Project director

Jon Marvel, the co-founder and executive director for 21 years of the Hailey-based conservation group Western Watersheds Project, will step down from his post at the end of this month. He will be replaced by the organization’s current public lands director, Travis Bruner. Marvel—refreshingly outspoken or rudely abrasive, depending on whom you ask—has steered Western Watersheds Project toward its audacious goal of ending livestock grazing on public land in the West. Under his direction, Western Watersheds Project has grown from a group of three conservation activists who began bidding on Idaho state trust land grazing leases to a staff of 14 people keeping an eye on management of public rangelands in 10 states. Though the organization remains far from accomplishing its ultimate goal, it has garnered a reputation as being effective in forcing federal and state land managers to follow environmental laws and their own regulations, often under threat of litigation. Suzanne Stone, Idaho representative for Defenders of Wildlife, called Western Watersheds Project “a very powerful ally for the environment.” “They’ve had a very loud voice in raising concerns that haven’t been promoted in Idaho,” she said. “They’ve been paying attention to things that have otherwise gone undocumented. “They’ve sometimes been considered abrasive, but they’ve been very true to their mission. Sometimes you need bookends to find out where the middle is.” In the organization’s office above Shorty’s Diner in Hailey, Marvel, 67, reflected upon his tenure. He said that as a result of Western Watersheds Project’s efforts, range managers with the U.S. Forest Service and BLM have started to move away from viewing themselves as working solely for ranchers, rather than for the public at large. “It’s not the degree of impact that we’d like to see,” he said, “but it’s a definite change from the acquiescent attitude that the agencies had prior to our existence. Because we’re now in the arena, the agencies have to pay attention to what we say, because they know we know what’s going on."...more