With the opening of offices in Boise, Idaho and Bozeman, Montana, Western Watersheds Project continues to expand its capability to restore and protect watersheds and wildlife in the West.

In September WWP hired Katie Fite in a new position as the organization's biodiversity director.

Fite has been one of the most successful advocates in the West for riparian restoration, wildlife and wild lands. A biologist with a graduate degree from Utah State University, she worked for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game for many years before taking the position of conservation director for the Committee for the High Desert. She worked for CHD for the past eight years.

"The Boise area is the population center of Idaho," said Fite. "One of my aims is to get more people out to areas like the Owyhee Canyonlands to show them firsthand what livestock are doing to their public lands and waters, from devouring sage grouse nesting cover to choking redband trout streams with sediment and waste."

Fite's work with WWP will have an impact on policymakers, the Bureau of Management and U.S. Forest Service. She has encyclopedic knowledge of public lands extending from Owyhee County, Idaho to Elko, White Pine and Humboldt counties in Nevada, as well as Malheur and Harney counties in Oregon, and will be responsible for monitoring BLM and Forest Service management of public lands across southern Idaho, all of Nevada and eastern Oregon.

Fite will also continue to work on projects already in progress for CHD in partnership with WWP, supporting legal actions against the BLM in Twin Falls and Owyhee counties in Idaho, on State of Idaho public school endowment lands in Owyhee County, and on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada. She can be reached at katie@westernwatersheds.org.

In October WWP hired Glenn Hockett of Bozeman, Mont., as director of operations in Montana.

Hockett brings a degree in range management and more than 20 years of experience in rangeland ecology to WWP He is president of the Bozeman-based Gallatin Wildlife Association, which advocates fish and wildlife conservation with a focus on keystone native species, including bison, bighorn sheep, sage grouse, trout and beaver.

The GWA was instrumental in recent efforts to reintroduce bighorn sheep to the Greenhorn mountains of Montana. The group has also initiated stream-side fisheries and beaver habitat recovery projects along Brackett Creek in the Bridger area and worked to control noxious weeds along the Madison River in Bear Trap Canyon of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness Area.

Under Hockett's leadership, the GWA has endorsed the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign.

Hockett will continue as president of GWA while working for Western Watersheds Project. He will continue to monitor forest plan revisions for the Beaverhead Deerlodge and Gallatin National Forests; the Resource Management Plan for the BLM Dillon Field Office; and management plans of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks for elk, sage grouse, grizzly bears, bison and wolves.

"I intend to keep this focus as Montana director for WWP," Hockett said. "I also plan to monitor and participate in a proposal by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to develop a habitat conservation plan for Montana state lands."

Hockett's on-the-ground knowledge of public lands in Montana ensure that his WWP work will go a long way toward our goals of restoration and protection of watersheds and wildlife. He can be reached at: glenn@westernwatersheds.org.

WWP now has offices in Mendon, Utah; Pinedale, Wyo.; Missoula and Bozeman, Mont.; and Hailey and Boise, Idaho, as well as ongoing conservation work in eight western states.