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About Us
Our Vision & Mission
Who We Are & What We Do
Board of Directors
Staff
NWIA Press
Our History
Where We're Headed Now
Recent Activities
Our Locations
Contact Us
Our
Vision and mission
Vision: Northwest residents care about and are active stewards of the unique natural and cultural heritage of their public lands.
Mission: Discover Your Northwest promotes the discovery of Northwest public lands, enriches the experience of visitors, and builds community stewardship of these special places today and for generations to come.
Who
we are
Discover Your Northwest is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit social enterprise based in Seattle, Washington and also licensed to operate in Oregon, Idaho, California, and Montana. Since 1974, we have provided on-site resources that help visitors have a great experience when visiting Northwest public lands and inspire them to become stewards of these places. From Mount Hood National Forest outside of Portland to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in downtown Seattle, we passionately believe in the people-value of Northwest public lands. Each of our staff and board members are dedicated to ensuring that our public lands are places of education, recreation, and inspiration for everyone. To find out more about other nonprofits
like us, please visit the Association
of Partners for Public Lands website.
What
we do
We help people have great experiences when visiting Northwest public lands and aspire to cultivate a spirit of community stewardship of these special places for generations to come. We do this by operating on-site educational bookstores that provide visitors with high-quality books, toys, DVDs, and other items that help them appreciate the natural and historical significance of the area (see our online store for examples of what we sell). You can find us at such wonderful places as the Hiram S. Chittenden Locks in Seattle to the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest up in the North Cascades as well as even more locations. We then use our sales proceeds to fund additional on-site events and programs, including state-of-the-art displays, free publications, speaker series, and habitat cleanup and restoration programs for volunteers of all social backgrounds. We even funded the world famous VolcanoCam at Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and much more.
Our
History
You may not have heard of us until recently, but we've been around for a long time. We were founded
in August 1974 and began by selling books, maps, and other educational items to visitors at selected Northwest public lands - all in a very low profile manner. Gradually, through the 80s and 90s, we added more selection and opened more locations accross the Northwest. So if you have ever bought a map or trail guide at Mount Rainier, Olympic National Park, or some other Northwest park or forest during the last 34 years, you've probably bought it from us! Thanks to our retail sales, we generate about $800,000 in educational funding for visitor programs.
Where We're Headed Now
We still sell all the great merchandise we always have, but lately, we see a new and troubling problem that requires more of us: There aren’t enough people visiting public lands or involved in caring for them. Wonderful places that were created for everyone, such as Olympic National Forest and San Juan Island National Historical Park, are fast becoming places for no one. Government statistics show that the number of visitors to Northwest public lands has been steadily decreasing since the early nineties. Worse, the diversity of visitors to public lands lags far behind the increasing cultural diversity of the Northwest, with the distressing implication that the constituency for public lands is effectively shrinking. Those that do visit are met with damaged trails, deteriorated facilities, outdated displays, limited hours to access visitor centers, few trained staff to answer questions, and sometimes even “closed” signs. Meanwhile, tax-based funding declines, conditions get worse, even fewer people visit, and support for the value and upkeep of public lands continues to erode away.
We're here to change all that! But we realize that saving the people-value of public lands from the downward spiral of social indifference and physical deterioration is beyond the capabilities of any one group or individual. Whole communities must come together in the spirit of stewardship to ensure that public lands – and the value they hold for each of us as individuals – are both fully realized and safeguarded for future generations. Simply put, the solution is for more people to get more involved through community stewardship. We believe that if more people visit public lands and experience their natural and cultural value, the more they will be moved to support them through a variety of means, including personal involvement, private philanthropy, and even tax-based initiatives.
We therefore recognize an urgent need to do more than sell educational merchandise, as we have in the past. We must actively join the broader social project of restoring the constituency for public lands by getting more people to visit and get personally involved as stewards. To this end, we're launching a community engagement strategy that 1) increases the total number and diversity of visitors, 2) enhances the quality of the visitor experience and 3) deepens the personal commitment and involvement of all visitors.
Recent Activities
Along these lines, we recently helped raise $500,000 for new, interactive museum exhibits at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and another quarter-million dollars in cash and in-kind donations in support of the Capitol Christmas Tree 2006 project. The Capitol Christmas Tree is an annual holiday tradition held in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C. The 2006 event featured a majestic, 65-foot Pacific Silver Fir from Washington State and over 3000 ornaments made by schoolchildren from around the state. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to help educate the whole nation about the importance of trees to our state's rich cultural history and vibrant ecological diversity.
Lately, we're getting involved in even more exciting projects. One of our newest is the new Washington CoastSavers program, designed to empower concerned citizens to help remove marine debris from Washington's Pacific Coast. We also just geld the first annual Mountains to Meadows 5K Fun Run and Half-Marathon at Lolo Pass Visitor Center, along the Idaho-Montana border. Proceeds of this event will be used to help visitors discover and appreciate the rich history and striking beauty of public lands around the visitor center. Find out more about our work here.
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