Thanks to generous funding received last July from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, administered through The Nature Conservancy of Alaska (TNC), KHLT is spreading its wings across the Kenai Peninsula. The Kenai River Region (KRR) office in the Soldotna Blazy Mall is in full operation in space we share with the Kenai Watershed Forum and the Kenai River Project of TNC who are also working on Kenai River watershed protection programs.

We intend to provide our services across our expanded service area at a level supportable by the local communities. Our goal is to attract a broad, peninsula-wide membership base. Since she began work in July, Kenai River Regional Director Pam Houston concentrated her efforts on outreach and membership development. She introduced KHLT to civic organizations, government agencies, and neighborhood associations, letting them know what we do and, just as importantly, what we do not do! We emphasize our mission to work with willing landowners to protect significant natural habitat and explain that we do not impose our program on anyone. Several new protection projects are now under discussion as a result of our outreach efforts. We are sorry to announce that we are losing Pam Houston after such a short, although very productive term. We wish her our best at graduate school where she has just recently been accepted. She is a quick study and we are delighted that she will continue to volunteer for KHLT as time permits.

Acting Resurrection Bay Region Director and board member Mark Luttrell leads our eastern peninsula program from his donated office space in the Resurrect Art Coffee House in Seward. KHLT will soon implement an upper-peninsula proactive protection strategy based on a resource-specific mapping project similar to our successful lower-peninsula project of a few years ago. Mark and new Kenai River Region staff will research and identify priority areas based on an analysis of natural resources, property sizes, and imminent threat. We will consult other organizations and government agencies to make the best use of existing resources to create this series of maps. We will then send information outlining KHLT's conservation options to landowners in priority areas and work with those who respond favorably to increase the amount of protected habitat peninsula-wide.

We are pleased with what we have accomplished so far to expand our presence beyond our original boundaries, and are excited about becoming a sustainable force for land conservation across the entire Kenai Peninsula.