Board Members

Walter Henze

Walter is one of the founding board members of OVLC, serving since November 2002. He is the board treasurer and heads the Finance and Planning Committee. Walter is recently retired from a family medical practice in Tonasket. He became involved with the OVLC because of a desire to help preserve the wide open spaces. He and his wife, Sarah, were able to help move that vision forward by placing a conservation easement on their 160 acres. He would like to see the Okanogan thriving again with an agricultural economy that returns a good living to those who work the land. This means in part preserving the family farms and ranches undivided, something that the OVLC strives to do.

Lee Root

Lee was active in the North Okanogan Sportsmen's Council, out of which the OVLC grew in November 2002. He has been a founding OVLC board member since that time. He is chair of the Board Development Committee. Lee is retiring from the Oroville School District, where he has taught for 34 years. He is active in outdoor recreation and raises and trains versatile hunting dogs. The loss of wildlife habitat, viable farm land, and large tracks of land in Okanogan County are some of his major concerns as a board member.

Fernne Rosenblatt

Fernne became a founding member of OVLC in November 2002. She is the board secretary and leads the Outreach and Education Committee. Fernne presently has a small family mediation practice and continues to work in victim and offender mediation. She and her husband, Roger, have sponsored a field day on their forested property near Okanogan for 7th grade Omak Middle School students for over seven years. She believes that connecting people to the land is a great way to nurture good land stewardship. She is an avid hiker and cross country skier, an amateur birder and botanist, and a devotee of local land products.

Dale Swedberg

Dale joined OVLC as a founding member in November 2002 after having been a member of its predecessor, the North Okanogan Sportsmen’s Council. He serves on the Land Protection Committee. Dale is the manager of the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area. His work with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife has taken him all over the county, where he’s seen large ranches being chopped into 20 and 40 acre parcels that would never be ranch or rangeland again and certainly would not support the wildlife they did previously. He would like to see a higher emphasis on open space and retaining ranch and farm land for future food and fiber production.

Todd Thorn

Todd became an OVLC board member in February 2005. He serves as board president and chairs the Land Protection Committee. Todd is a forester, working for the Colville Confederated Tribes Environmental Trust Program. His work focuses on watershed health and is strongly connected to the land and landscape of the Okanogan. Todd enjoys working both with resource managers and landowners, often finding they are one in the same person, who share his goal of an Okanogan full of healthy streams, range, and forests, along with vibrant communities of people, plants, and animals. He believes the Okanogan needs its own land trust, understanding and responding to local conservation priorities.

Staff

Christine Olson

Christine has worked as the part-time administrative assistant for OVLC since May 2004. Outside of OVLC, she volunteers for various community organizations and enjoys her connections to the land through outdoor recreation opportunities and gardening. She became interested in land conservation as a child and has been a supporter of land trusts since the 1990's. She believes this is an important time to identify and protect those aspects of the Okanogan which contribute to its rural character.