Let me begin by saying thank you, thank you, thank you for your generous financial support for the Wildlands Project. Thanks to your support, we have evolved as a leader in the conservation movement with bold, workable, and large-scale ideas.

We pledged to do all that's necessary to continue to be effective and see that our ideas and vision are carried out. This has entailed an intensive review of our entire organization and a renewed commitment to enter the next phase of our existence focused, solvent, effective, and inclusive. All that's come to pass and all that we've strategized during the last several months suggests the best is yet to come.

We are steadfast in our belief that we can preserve our North American wild heritage and are evolving along with the cumulative work of the conservation movement. We are totally focused on our mission: to accomplish our conservation scale vision. And here we are, in the next and perhaps most exciting phase of our existence, bringing our science to the ground by connecting vast networks of people, organizations and lands. Because of your support as individual donors or visionary foundations, we are seeing hope turn into reality, bit by bit.

As you will read in more detail, the megalinkage we call "Spine of the Continent" has been the focus of intense work and collaboration by some very committed conservation organizations. In addition to the work they do individually, an unprecedented action is taking place. Drawn together by the Wildlands Project's southwest program director, Kim Vacariu, the leaders within all of these separate organizations have been meeting to explore a large, collaborative, coordinated effort that will connect wildlands down the entire Spine of the Continent. (Please see the front page article.)

I had the good fortune to attend the last pivotal meeting of these organizations, and it's clear that the time is now for the Wildlands Project to provide the funding, manpower, and strategies to enable this group to move forward. To put this recent meeting in perspective, we need to go back to 2003 when the Wildlands Project conducted its Room to Roam Campaign. This campaign was designed to draw attention to the incredible opportunity we have to reconnect and restore a great swath of land from the Yukon to Mexico's Northern Sierra Madre. The media widely covered this story and introduced a larger audience to the importance of a large connected landscape and the hurdles we must clear to protect this critical region.

The Room to Roam campaign was just the introduction. During the last three years, our partners in this region have been steadily moving forward on the ground from Mexico to Canada, inspired by the Wildlands Project vision. This network of partners has been making tremendous headway in its various regions, finishing up the science and beginning implementation. Think for a moment of our goal here...protecting 4000 miles of connected critical land for wildlife and human communities!

Back to my opening comment. Thank you for funding our work. And, most recently, thank you to the Thaw Foundation and its administrator, Sherry Thompson, who supported us with ideas and funding for our recent Spine of the Continent gathering. Also thank you to Denise Joines from the Wilburforce Foundation, who participated so enthusiastically and who brought a wealth of knowledge to the table. Many of the groups participating in this effort are supported by Wilburforce and without such support, our work would not be possible.

Thank you to Training Resources for the Environmental Community (TREC), which supported the workshop by sending Ken Margolis, a critical thinker and fundraising expert, to lead this workshop. Very excited by our work, he provided a realistic look at the support needed to accomplish this ambitious and important endeavor. Lisa Lauf, a communications expert, led the communications session by asking tough questions about how we communicate our messages and gathering input as we seek to frame the issues for larger audiences. Michael Soulé, one of the founders of the Wildlands Project, led us with inspiration, experience and humor.

One of the opportunities that surfaced during this workshop, common to all Wildlands Project programs, is movement from inspiring conservation organizations to inspiring a larger audience of special groups and individuals that can impact timely and large-scale implementation in the Rockies, the Sierra Madres, the Pacific Coast, and the Adirondacks. How are we going to reach and inspire an audience far beyond our members, our partners, and other conservationists? How do we speak in a language and with images that touch a greater number of people? We have to engage a much greater network of people to truly move our vision of connected landscapes to the reality of connected landscapes in order to support the movement of highly interactive species.

To get this done, we have to enlist experience beyond our collective talents, beyond our traditional partners and possibly beyond our comfort level. Finding our voice and effectively using it is one of the most critical steps we can take to begin to implement the hard work that has come before us. We must be able to talk to-and inspire to action-politicians, corporate America, Republicans, Democrats, teachers, fathers, and mothers. Our issues are non-partisan. When we accomplish our mission, all communities-both wild and man-made-will benefit.

A very heartfelt, personal, and joyful thanks to you for supporting us. We are working hard to keep it wild. -Margo McKnight