Happy New Year, Friends of the Inyo!

Let’s launch into the January issue of The Juniper by talking about numbers. I have a brother who is a mathematician and he will tell you that numbers are relevant to everything in life.

For example, in 2023, Friends of the Inyo is starting off its 37^th anniversary year with three staff members assuming increased responsibilities in redefined roles, one who is leaving us, and others who will be joining us later this year.

Thank you!

Now that I have your full attention, let me explain our “Friendsraising” campaign to help us grow our membership to 2,030 by the year 2030. And yes, there is a logic behind this.

Let’s start by talking about 30 x 30

“30 x 30” (read “Thirty by Thirty”) is a movement at the global, national, and state/regional levels that aims to designate 30% of all lands and waters as protected areas by the year 2030.

For California, that means conserving 30% of our state’s lands and coastal waters. Why? As detailed in Governor Gavin Newsom’s inspiring Executive Order N-82-20, signed on October 7, 2020, California’s 30 x 30 Initiative (californianature.ca.gov) aims to conserve biodiversity, combat climate change and build climate-resiliency through nature-based solutions.

For the Eastern Sierra, which boasts millions of acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, the potential contributions toward the advancement of 30 x 30 goals are enormous.

Enter Friends of the Inyo: That means not only our Staff and Board Members, but also YOU – because you, as our supporter (donor/partner/advocate/volunteer) are a Friend of the Inyo! And it is going to take all of us working together to make California 30 x 30 a reality.

As we reported in our Jeffrey Pine Journal’s FOI 35^th Anniversary Issue in the Fall of 2021, Friends of the Inyo started in 1986 as a group of fewer than 10 people who organized others to comment on the then new Forest Plan for the Inyo National Forest before the March 1987 deadline. Twenty-five years later, in 2011, we boasted a little over 650 members, and since the beginning of our current decade, our membership has ebbed and flowed between around 1,000 and 1,200. With your help, we believe we can basically double our membership to 2,030 in the eight full years between now and the end of 2030 (or even sooner)! More Friends of the Inyo = More Conservation Warriors = More people actively working to meet California's 30 x 30 goals. I told you there was a method to our madness!

Power in Numbers

Numbers matter tremendously in:

Advocacy: Our Action Alerts to comment on and protest proposed extraction projects that could irrevocably harm the Bodie Hills, Long Valley, Hot Creek, Conglomerate Mesa and any other Eastern Sierra lands or waters we are called upon to protect, could never succeed without significant support from all of you.

Volunteering: Our small Stewardship Team’s healing impact on public lands and Wilderness is multiplied manifold when dozens of volunteers sign up to help clean up litter, dismantle illegal fire rings, install signage, clear trails of overgrowth and lakes and streams of harmful broken fishing line, take down obsolete cattle fencing, and efface illegal off-roading vehicle tracks from delicate desert ecosystems. And volunteer time is assigned a dollar value ($35.56 per hour in California) that can be used as important leverage on our grant applications. 

Philanthropy: Protecting and caring for the public lands of the Eastern Sierra costs money. Members’ donations help cover expenses related to our various campaigns and initiatives, as well as our general operating costs, and can be leveraged to secure additional funding from grant makers who require us to demonstrate that FOI has multiple funding streams.

Sustainability: Growing our member base will yield more long-term supporters, donors, volunteers, legacy gift donors, advocates, partners, board members and employees to ensure FOI can go on thriving far into the future.

'Friendsraising' – What we need from you!

Basically, if you love Friends of the Inyo and what we do for the Eastern Sierra, we need you to bring your friends, family members and networks on board as supporters, members or volunteers. That’s what “friendsraising” is: using YOUR connections to help a nonprofit grow its support base.

Here is what you can do between now and 2030:

• Keep your membership with FOI current by donating a minimum of $35 a year toward our work. A membership entitles you to receive our Jeffrey Pine Journal magazine delivered to your home free of charge, stay current on all our goings on through our Juniper E-Newsletter and our Action Alerts, and receive special announcements and event opportunities on a members-first basis.
• Gift a membership to a friend or loved one. We’ve made it easy for you to do so at friendsoftheinyo.org/donate.
• Sign up for and invite your friends to FOI events throughout the year, from the Owens Lake Bird Festival to online educational events to our Summer Interpretive Hikes to our Dark Desert Skies Campouts. Look for our events offering and sign up on our Events page, friendsoftheinyo.org/events.
• Encourage others to volunteer with Friends of the Inyo. Most of our volunteering events are half-day affairs out in nature from the spring through the fall. We provide coffee, snacks, and raffle prizes. If you are volunteering with us, bring a friend or two. For heartier souls, we have multi-day stewardship weeks out in Wilderness: Working hard for a good cause by day, and camping out under the stars at night is a great way to bond with others who value conservation as much as you do. Sign up – or get your friends to sign up – on our Events page. Or visit the Stewardship tab on our website and add your name to our new Volunteer Mailing List so you can be contacted for stewardship opportunities as they come up.  
• Share our e-mail Action Alerts with people you know and encourage them to get involved. Many voices make for change.
• Encourage your friends to sign up to receive our Juniper Monthly E-Newsletter at friendsoftheinyo.org/subscribe.

So there you are, Dear Friend: It’s up to every one of us to "Grow our Circle of Friends…of the Inyo!" Close to one-third of our public lands and waters depend on it! Will you help us get to 2,030 members by 2030? Or, to put it mathematically, can we count on you?

Staff Announcements

Stay tuned for other new staff announcements coming up later in the first quarter of 2023. 

Snow Surveys - 
Volunteers Needed!

Winter is upon us, and it is already gearing up to be a good one! FOI is once again collaborating with Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA) to collect some Winter Recreation Data to better inform the US Forest Service Subpart-C Winter Travel Management planning process.

In the past two winter seasons, you might have seen an FOI staffer or board member out at Rock Creek Sno-Park or Obsidian Dome NordicTrack taking snow depth measurements or tallying recreational users. Well, we can always use the public's help!

If you cross-country or backcountry (XC/BC) ski or snowboard, snowshoe, or snowmobile in the Inyo National Forest and would like to help the USFS make informed decisions about Winter Recreation and Over Snow Vehicle use, then join us in some "Citizen Science."

Sign up with FOI at friendsoftheinyo.org/wintertravelplanning; you will receive details on how to download the RIMS app and begin logging data. 

Once you’ve signed up, you'll be ready to record some observations and be a volunteer field researcher!

Questions? Contact Lindsay@friendsoftheinyo.org. Thank you!

The latest (December 2022) issue of the official E-Newsletter of the Keep Long Valley Green Coalition (KLVG), Every Last Drop, came out at the end of last month. It features a look at L.A.'s crumbling infrastructure for water distribution (read pipes) that is causing a heck of a lot of waste of the precious Eastern Sierra water the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has, for over a century, been siphoning away from our precious "land of flowing water," Payahuunadu. Please share it widely with your friends and networks.