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Who We Are
Staff members, board members, advisors are all listed below. Our address, phone, and fax can be found at the bottom of each web page. Staff emails are “last name at westernlands.org”
History
The Western Lands Project was founded in 1997 as the Western Land Exchange Project by Janine Blaeloch, who serves as the project's director. The Project began with the purpose of monitoring exchanges of land between the federal government and private parties—an issue affecting the entire West, to which no organization was dedicated. Over time, as progress was made on land exchange reform (see our Achievements) the Project expanded its mission to watchdog the numerous attempts by Congress and the land agencies to privatize federal land. Privatization can be accomplished through land exchanges, land sales, and congressional giveaways. Equally central to our mission is our work to help everyday citizens involve themselves in decisions affecting their federal lands.
Staff
 Janine Blaeloch, Founder and Director
Janine earned a degree in Environmental Studies (B.A., University of Washington, 1989), with a self-designed program focusing on Public Lands Management and Policy. For eight years, Janine worked as an environmental planner in both the private and public sectors. Her work included preparation and analysis of numerous U.S. Forest Service environmental impact statements and planning documents. Janine has been a forest activist since 1985. She is on the Board of Directors of the Railroads & Clearcuts Campaign. She is also a board member for GreenLaw, an association of University of Washington law students working to promote cooperation between budding environmental attorneys and grassroots organizations, and for the Public Information Network, which provides critical research for environmental and social justice activists.
 Emily Crandall, Development Manager
Emily joined Western Lands Project in August 2008 after working for several years in nonprofit administration in Seattle. A passion for environmental issues led her to pursue an M.A. degree in Policy Studies (2007) from the University of Washington Bothell, where she focused on environmental policy concerns. During her graduate studies, Emily researched public land management issues and gained familiarity with the central problems tackled by WLP. Emily is originally from the Upper Midwest and holds a B.A. (2003) from the University of Michigan, where she graduated with university honors.
 Christopher Krupp, Staff Attorney
Chris earned his JD from the University of Washington Law School in 2001, and also received a Certificate in Environmental Law. Chris grew up in the Midwest. He holds a BA in Economics from Lawrence University, where he was a National Merit Scholar. After his first trip west, Chris developed a passion for public lands and decided to pursue public interest environmental law. Before earning his law degree, Chris wrote a digest of land exchange cases as a work-study employee of WLXP and developed an in-depth knowledge of the land exchange issue.
Board of Directors
Marianne Dugan, Secretary-Treasurer joined Western Lands’ board in 1999 while an attorney and associate director with the Western Environmental Law Center, where she litigated two major land exchange cases. Since leaving WELC in 1999, Marianne has worked as a lawyer in private practice in Eugene, Oregon, in the areas of civil rights, employment rights, property disputes, personal injury, and professional malpractice, and continues her work in the area of environmental and land use law. Marianne earned a JD with certificates in environmental and ocean/coastal law as well as a Masters Degree in environmental studies from the University of Oregon.
Steve Gilbert, who joined our board in October 2008, lives in Helena and has been a Montana resident since 1967. Steve has worked as a biological consultant and was co-owner of an environmental consulting company that specialized in wildlife, aquatics/fisheries, soils, vegetation, forestry, range and hydrology. He has also worked in Alaska on salmon studies, Yellowstone Park on grizzly bears, the Teton Wilderness on an early satellite/radio-telemetry study with elk, Pasayten Wilderness and the North Cascades, Baffin Island and Glacier Park. He is an associate with the Montana Peregrine Institute, and has conducted neo-tropical bird and raptor surveys in the West nearly every year since 1971.
Steve served on the boards of Northern Plains Resource Council and Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC). He was chosen the MEIC Community Activist of the Year in 2003.
Steve has worked and/or played in all 56 Montana counties and every mountain range, wilderness area and national park in the state. He currently does some biological consulting and is the state non-motorized trails specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, where he helps administer the federally-funded Recreational Trails.
David Gladstone joined Western Lands' board in 2008. David received his A.B. from Clark University in Worcester, MA; his M.S. in Actuarial Science from Northeastern University in Boston, MA; and his J.D. from the University of Puget Sound. He ran a small actuarial pension consulting firm in Seattle for 22 years before retiring. He and his wife, Melinda, currently manage a small private foundation dedicated to the purchase, rehabilitation and preservation of land (mostly forested lands) in Washington State. Since its inception, the foundation has planted more than 25,000 trees on these properties. David is also on the Board of Pilchuck Audubon Society. He lives in Snohomish, Washington.
Sandy Lonsdale joined Western Lands’ board in 1999, after spearheading efforts to stop a nearly 100,000-acre land exchange between the Deschutes National Forest and Crown Pacific Timber near his hometown of Bend, Oregon. Sandy works in the renewable energy field now as a director of a small, privately owned geothermal development company based in Bend. He also has a history as a volunteer organizer and leader for the Sierra Club and other Northwest environmental groups and as a freelance journalist and professional photographer focusing on land use and conservation issues, primarily protecting the last of the great wild Oregon. He recently completed a photo-inventory of Oregon’s unprotected wild forests and produced the photography for an exploration guidebook for Oregon’s high desert wildlands called "Oregon Desert Guide-50 Hikes." Sandy recently moved to Moab, Utah, where he and his wife own a small lodging establishment called the Kokopelli Lodge and Suites.
Erica Rosenberg, President, board member since 2006, was until recently the Director of Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s Program on Public Policy, where she has written on and taught public lands policy including on NEPA and land deals. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and J.D. from Boston College. Erica has had extensive experience in environmental and natural resources policy. She has served as Democratic counsel to both the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Resources and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Erica has also served as counsel to the National Congress of the Republic of Palau and to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and has been a senior environmental policy advisor at the USAID.
Rebecca Rundquist, has been on Western Lands’ board since 2000. Rebecca graduated from Lewis and Clark, Northwestern School of Law in 1994 with a certificate in Environmental Law. She has volunteered for American Rivers, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and for the Northwest Environmental Defense Center as Executive Director. Rebecca began volunteering for us in 1998. As an attorney, she has worked on a variety of environmental and conservations issues. In 2002 she received a Master’s degree in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Rebecca currently lives in Maine.
Advisory board
JACK MACDONALD recently retired as the Chief State Appraiser for the Bureau of Land Management in Utah. Jack has a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wyoming and a B.S. in Anthropology from the University of Utah. His public lands career began at the Wyoming State Land Commission, where he was a senior landman. Until his retirement in September 1999, Jack was in charge of all appraisals and reviews involving the sale and exchange of public lands in Utah, as well as all Land & Water Conservation Fund acquisitions and access-related acquisitions. Over the course of his career, Jack has been involved in over 2,000 land exchanges and has been vocal in his opposition to land trades that do not serve the public. Jack's "whistleblower" complaint prompted the Interior Department inspector general to investigate agency malfeasance in St. George, Utah land exchanges. His in depth knowledge and experience have been invaluable to our work. Jack resides in Powell, Wyoming with his wife, Linda.
CHARLES E. HANCOCK was for 15 years Chief Appraiser for the Nevada state office of the Bureau of Land Management. Charles worked for the Bureau for 36 years before retiring in 1989. Before his stint as Chief Appraiser, he worked in Washington, D.C. and California in land classification, Land and Minerals, and as an economist in the River Basin Planning and Budgeting Division. Since leaving the Bureau, Charles has been active in local and statewide public land issues in Nevada and has been a vocal critic of current federal land exchange policy and appraisal procedures. His work has led to investigations of Nevada land trades by the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture inspectors general. He and his wife Catherine reside in Reno.
JERI SMITH-FORNARA has been an environmental and social justice activist for over thirty years. Jeri was a founding board member of Ramparts and Mother Jones magazines and was active in the civil rights movement. She also served as a Citizen Advisor for the Office of Technology Assessment, has worked on toxics, AIDS, and women's issues—and in the late 1980s was a central organizer in the successful effort to stop a land exchange that would have enabled Phelps Dodge to operate an open-pit mine in the Prescott National Forest. A life-long resident of Prescott, AZ, Jeri continues to devote her energy to a host of causes, including federal land exchange reform.
DR. JOHN OSBORN is founder and long-time president of The Lands Council in Spokane, Washington. He is coordinator of the Railroads & Clearcuts Campaign, which seeks to resolve the lingering inequities of the Northern Pacific Railroad land grants. The Campaign is pursuing revestment to the public of the "checkerboard" lands illegally inherited and purchased from the railroad by timber corporations. Dr. Osborn is active in a range of public lands issues affecting eastern Washington and northern Idaho.
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