About Us
Save the Yellowstone Grizzly works to maintain the grizzly’s status as a federally listed threatened species, promote the use of climate change science, facilitate habitat connectivity, bring current science to outdated state and federal bear management policies, and collaborate on educational efforts that result in bear-friendly communities.
Our History
Since then, the organization has expanded its mission to fight for all grizzly bears in the lower 48 states, through education, advocacy and legal action.
Staff
William H. Funk
Communications Director
An award-winning freelance journalist and former executive director of an 11-county land trust in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Bill holds both a JD and a master’s degree in environmental policy from Vermont Law School, one of the country’s top environmental law facilities, and has developed a reputation for explicating complex legal, policy and scientific matters in illuminating and compelling prose. His areas of journalistic expertise include endangered species and habitat preservation, wildlife crime, history, public lands management, climate change, animal cruelty issues, wetlands mitigation, land use, environmental law, habitat connectivity, wilderness subjects, traditional cultures, rural living and ethnology. He is particularly interested in journalistic projects that involve some of the weightiest topics of our time: rewilding, the African poaching crisis, the Anthropocene and the Sixth Extinction. Bill has worked with numerous environmental organizations, including Earthjustice, and both federal and state environmental agencies, and is a skilled and eager naturalist. Feel free to contact Bill anytime!
Board of Trustees
Doug Peacock
Chair
Doug has published and lectured widely on wilderness issues, and is the author of six books including Was It Worth It: A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home. A Vietnam veteran and former Green Beret medic, Peacock co-founded Round River Conservation Studies, and served on the boards of the Sea Shepherd and the Raincoast Conservation Society. He has received Guggenheim and Lannan fellowships, and an Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He lives south of Livingston, Montana.
Rick Bass
Rick is a founder and the interim executive director of the Yaak Valley Forest Council. He is the author of over 30 books of environmental essays, novels and short fiction including The Lost Grizzlies, Brown Dog of the Yaak, The Lives of Rocks and Winter: Notes from Montana. He has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Marc Beaudin
Secretary
A former Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation artist-in-residence, Marc is a poet, theatre artist and co-owner of Elk River Books and co-founder of Elk River Arts & Lectures in Livingston, Montana. He is the author of Life List: Poems, the hitchhiking memoir Vagabond Song, and the jazz/poetry album From Coltrane to Coal Train: An Eco-Jazz Suite. The co-editor of Unearthing Paradise: Montana Writers in Defense of Greater Yellowstone, his work has been widely anthologized in publications dedicated to environmental and social justice.
Lance Craighead
Lance is the executive director of the Craighead Institute. He is the author of Bears of the World, and co-editor of Conservation Planning: Shaping the Future. He received an M.S. in wildlife ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in biological sciences from Montana State University, studying grizzly bear genetics in the Alaskan arctic. He is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the World Committee on Protected Areas, the Society for Conservation Biology, and the Society for Conservation GIS.
Dan Sullivan
Treasurer
Dan is a board advisor for Park County Environmental Council and has been a fierce advocate for wilderness all his life. He has spent decades exploring and protecting the backcountry in and around Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. He has called Livingston, Montana, home for nearly 30 years.
Terry Tempest Williams
Terry is a naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, demonstrating how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. She is the author of numerous books including Erosion: Essays of Undoing, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; and When Women Were Birds. She has received numerous literary and conservation awards, as well as Lannan and Guggenheim Fellowships.
Michelle Uberuaga
Michelle is the executive director of the Park County Environmental Council. She lives in Livingston and works as a community organizer, mother, and an environmental attorney. She grew up in Mount Rainier National Park, where she learned that children should be allowed limitless opportunities to wander aimlessly in the woods.
Chuck Watson
Chuck, the owner of Watson Law in Bozeman, is a founding member and former president of the Montana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is a full fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, served as chairman of the Criminal Section of the Montana State Bar, and was named a “top 100 trial lawyer” by the American Trial Lawyers Association. He is a recipient of the NAACP’s Atticus Finch Criminal Justice Award for his pro bono work.
“The grizzly is the single animal on our continent that reminds the most arrogant species on earth of your place on the ancient cosmic food chain. You’re not the top dog, you reside within, as we always have. Living with grizzlies is enforced humility, a quality sorely needed these days and preserving grizzlies means putting the brakes on a world gone mad.”
—Doug Peacock
Voices for Save the Yellowstone Grizzly
“She might be shot so her head may be mounted on a wall…many hearts would break. I know mine would.”
“Without bears, Yellowstone is not Yellowstone. It’s a zoo.”
“Save the bear, save the place.”