Hello friends! I hope this message finds you in the midst of an enjoyable summer. The spring brought us fantastic moisture and as I travel the state I see signs of excellent wildlife habitat everywhere. Certainly a good thing for Montana wildlife, including bighorn sheep!

If I haven’t mentioned it before, my day job is as an engineer and I spend much of my time in an office setting. A friend and I were laughing about how the 1999 movie “Office Space” satirized the American office work life. If you haven’t seen it, it is a riot. In the show, the company hires two “efficiency consultants” to make staff cuts. One of “Bobs”, as they were called, asked an employee, “What would you say…ya’ do here?” I won’t ruin the movie any more than that, but that line got me thinking about our organization…What is it that we do here?

Our mission has been and continues to focus on promoting state bighorn sheep herd populations through projects, research, and professional management initiatives. Since the inception of this organization, the MTWSF board of directors has done a fantastic job directing funding and supporting many sheep habitat, conservation, and education projects. In doing so, they set the stage for something bigger and have awarded us the opportunity to make a bigger impact.

Our funding efforts are somewhat cyclical. There are years where we have spent over $200,000 funding projects, and other years like this year, the board of directors have only awarded approximately $15,000 in grant-in-aid. Considering we have had a record breaking fundraising year and last year we directed over $100,000 in GIA, you might be thinking like one of the Bob’s…what is it that you’re doing here? Good question.

MTWSF is in a season of change. The board of directors have been heavily focused on creating a sustainable future for our organization by implementing two key initiatives. First, was hiring our Executive Director, Ty Stubblefield. Since his hire, Ty has been incrementally improving MTWSF’s organizational effectiveness and will help lead MTWSF into the future through his efforts.

Second, was the creation of the MTWSF Conservation Committee. I am happy to report that committee seats have all been filled and the first meeting is scheduled for August. The Conservation Committee will have a volunteer representative from each FWP region of the state. Each committee member will be responsible for fostering a working relationship with their regional wild sheep biologist. They will work with FWP to identify and prioritize the issues that each herd faces and help develop solutions to those issues. Each regional representative will report back to the committee and work together to find solutions and provide support where needed. This will be a critical effort to maximize the $8,000,000 in funding MTFWP has allocated to bighorn sheep and rocky mountain goat research in the coming years.

These two initiatives took an immense amount of effort by the Board, Brian Solan, and Kurt Alt. Many thanks to everyone for their contributions!

I am here to tell you that while we may not have directed as many dollars to the ground as in years past, we have been extremely focused on establishing a firm foundation for MTWSF to serve its members and mission at a level of excellence we’ve never seen.