Our Mission
Thriving rural communities need strong economies, wholehearted commitment to taking care of the land and water, and top-notch learning opportunities. Our mission is to empower rural communities to create strong economies and healthy landscapes through land stewardship, education, and job creation. We accomplish this by working together with the community, partners, and you.
Investing in people and the land since 1996
who we are
Since 1996, we have enhanced opportunities on our forests and grasslands while caring for the land and water for future generations. Thriving rural communities must have strong education opportunities, a commitment to taking care of the land and water, and diverse, locally-owned businesses. We work with public and private partners to support Wallowa County and other rural communities in northeast Oregon.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
In 1996, due to changes in national forest management, the sawmills shut down and 20% of the workforce lost their jobs overnight.
In the back room of a bakery, a group of local citizens came together to create a new community organization to deal with this abrupt economic downturn–Wallowa Resources.
Founding members met in the back room of the Cloud 9 Bakery, Enterprise.
Since then, we have invested time, money, and effort in taking care of Wallowa County’s land and community. We educate the next generation. We put local people to work. We share our successes–and our failures–so that we can learn from each other. We work to revitalize rural communities, especially Wallowa County. Our response to that founding crisis became a national model for community-based solutions.
What is a Stewardship Economy?
In 1996, leaders in Wallowa County created Wallowa Resources, a new community-based nonprofit to support a collective effort of private landowners, local businesses, county government and others to sustain and enhance the County’s natural resource economy. While the initial priority was to ensure displaced forest and mill workers found new, meaningful and rewarding work – it soon became clear that a broader economic vision and plan was needed. This new vision must mitigate the slow erosion of rural communities resulting from the increased concentration of business creation, jobs, and wealth in urban areas.
In response, Wallowa Resources, and partners across the Pacific Northwest, are forging this new vision for rural places – one based on the skills, custom and culture of each place that responds to new market opportunities. We call this the Stewardship Economy – an economy shaped by the need, and responsibility, to manage for the sustainability of both land and communities. This work requires innovative and adaptive strategies that maintain and enhance the productivity and profitability of our working landscapes, while sustaining the quality and diversity of wildlife habitat and ecosystem services. The model seeks to ensure that the rural workforce and landowners are compensated for delivering high quality food, fiber, and renewable energy – as well as healthy, open landscapes.
It also recognizes the need to forge new relationships between rural and urban centers – and build off the existing connections offered by food and recreation – to nurture strong interest in land and community stewardship essential to motivating new investment and public policy. A new social contract centered on a stewardship economy will allow rural places to thrive, while continuing to deliver value to the rest of the country.
Wallowa Resources Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement
Wallowa Resources remains committed to the founding ideals of the United States of America, including the dignity, liberty and equality of all people. As a country, we have not always delivered on these aspirations for all our citizens. The responsibility of positive change in this regard lies with every individual, organization, and community that makes up our society. Therefore, we support, and will work for, the end of systemic racism, and all forms of discrimination, that threatens those ideals.
A strong inclusive democracy is essential if all people are to live, love, worship and work free from fear and exclusion. The potential prosperity of our community is bound by the health and inclusion of its marginalized members.
In Wallowa County, we are rightly proud of our sense of community, our friendships that span political and other divides, and the tremendous support given to people in need. However, racism has a history here too - and at times still persists in slurs, profiling, and bullying. By the very nature of our likeness as a community there is potential for those not like the majority to feel isolated. We believe it is our duty as leaders in our community to honor and respect the value of every individual and ensure that all are given equal opportunity, and treated with dignity and respect.
Wallowa Resources seeks to be a model within our community in how we live up to these beliefs and values and we remain committed to partnering with every individual and group that shares our vision for a community that values and respects each individual. We will be richer for doing so and will likewise be honoring the founding values of our country.
· We remain committed to our founding principles of equity and equality in our governance, staffing and operations.
· We will seek to lead by example as we continually evaluate our practices to identify pathways to better serve all people within our community. This will include the completion of an ongoing organizational assessment to identify areas for further improvement in our governance, policies and practices, and invest in them.
· We will work with community leaders to convene meaningful conversations about these issues in our communities.
· We will build from the diversity roundtables that Northeast Oregon Economic Development District has led, and we will engage in deep conversations to shine light on divisions and prejudice, and address these barriers to being a truly welcoming and supportive community.
· We will use the lessons and insights from these conversations to improve our community programming – including our natural resource education programs, our land stewardship work, the diverse collaboratives we facilitate, and our support to natural resource businesses.
· Finally, we will support those groups here that represent, and celebrate, the diversity that remains an important part of our community and work – including the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland Project, and Safe Harbors —while also seeking to form new partnerships to advance equitable, inclusive and vibrant communities.
