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Who We Are
Staff members, board members, advisors and their contact information are all listed below. Our address, phone, and fax can be found at the bottom of each web page.
History
The Western Land Exchange Project was founded in 1997 by Janine Blaeloch, who serves as the project's director. Janine's interest in federal land exchanges began in August 1996, when she was asked by citizens of Greenwater, Washington to evaluate the Huckleberry Land Exchange between the U.S. Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser. The trade involved about 4,300 acres of public land on Huckleberry Mountain/Green River watershed in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and about 30,000 acres of Weyerhaeuser lands in the Snoqualmie Pass area.
The stated purpose of the exchange was to consolidate ownership across the "checkerboard" lands, an alternating public/private ownership pattern left by the 19th-century railroad land grants. The exchange was also designed to provide habitat connectivity over the long term in the Snoqualmie Pass area. Public lands to be traded consisted of mature native forest and some old growth, while about 90 percent of the corporate lands had been clearcut or consisted of "rock and ice" and non-forested, high elevation areas.
Janine filed an administrative appeal of the swap on behalf of Pilchuck Audubon Society (PAS) and the Huckleberry Mountain Protection Society (HMPS). Eventually, PAS and HMPS filed suit against the Forest Service to stop the exchange. They were unsuccessful in federal district court, and the Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser exchanged deeds to the lands in the spring of 1998.
In May 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the federal court's ruling and remanded the exchange decision back to the Forest Service. The agency was ordered to issue a supplemental environmental impact statement to address the issues brought forth by PAS, HMPS, and their co-plaintiffs the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. (More on the Huckleberry Land Exchange can be found in news articles on our Press Room page).
As she expanded her research on land swaps, Janine found that large-scale land exchanges are a growing phenomenon around the West, many involving huge timber, mining, and development interests. While environmental and citizen groups were confronting individual land trades in their areas, there was no public-interest organization devoted to monitoring and analyzing the overall issue. The Western Land Exchange Project was created for that purpose.
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.
E-mail Janine
Joanne Hedou, Program Coordinator
Joanne earned her first degree in Geography with a focus in Community Planning at the University of Oregon. She moved to Seattle to work for King County in the Office of Historic Preservation on the Historic Sites Survey. She and a team of seven others drove the roads of the 2134 square mile county looking for forgotten structures and getting to know its roads and landscapes. Joanne then returned to graduate study in the Department of Geology and Geography at the University of Massachusetts that brought her back to one of her early passions — water — and the study of fluvial geomorphology.
Returning to Seattle with an MS in Geography in 1985, Joanne first worked for environmental consulting firms, collecting hydrologic and climatological data. She then returned to King County to help identify salmon bearing streams for the King County Sensitive Areas Map Folio and again was driving the back roads of the county. This position was followed by employment in the King County Department of Development and Environmental Services enforcing the newly developed regulations on geologic hazards. She soon learned that well-intentioned environmental regulations are difficult to enforce and often only benefit those who have the time and money to play out the long appeals processes that ultimately end up nullifying the original intent of the regulations. During the later 90’s Joanne taught environmental science at a local university. She then worked at Washington Trout in Duvall, from 2001-2002 as their Outreach Coordinator and is now a member of their board. Joanne will use her writing skills and experience working with environmental regulations to support the work of the Western Land Exchange Project.
E-mail Joanne
 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.
E-mail Chris
Board of Directors
Marianne Dugan, Secretary-Treasurer, was an attorney and associate director with the Western Environmental Law Center, where she litigated two major land exchange cases. She now works in private practice in Eugene, Oregon in the area of personal injury and consumer protection law 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.
E-mail Marianne
Sandy Lonsdale is a freelance journalist and photographer, chairs the Sierra Club’s Juniper Group, and focuses his activism on grazing, forests, mining, and water. Sandy recently completed a photo-inventory of Oregon’s High Desert wildlands for an upcoming exploration guidebook. He is a 29-year resident of Bend, Oregon.
E-mail Sandy
Rebecca Rundquist, President, 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 the Western Land Exchange Project in 1998. As an attorney, she has worked on a variety of environmental and conservations issues. She recently worked as a contract attorney for Preston, Gates, and Ellis in Seattle, Washington, and now attends the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. During her time with WLXP, she has researched notice and rulemaking issues as well as matters related to appraisals and the Freedom of Information Act.
E-mail Rebecca
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 indepth 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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