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Bert Fingerhut
Wilderness Enthusiast |
Over the past thirty
years, Bert Fingerhut guesses he’s spent more
than 400 nights in the Grand Canyon, plus an additional
200 nights in southern Utah, backpacking, rafting and
canyoneering. Beginning in the late 1960s, he would
leave his office in New York City on a Thursday night
and be in the canyons and slickrock country of Arizona
and southern Utah by the weekend. “The first
day your head is still back at the office thinking
about what you should have done back there,” Fingerhut
says of his trips. “But by the second or third
day your mind changes. You know you are in the right
place.”
Those long days in the canyons left a strong impression.
As he spent more time walking through the Colorado
Plateau’s stunning landscapes (he retired
in the early 1980s), Fingerhut began to learn more about the threats facing his
favorite places. He noticed indiscriminate oil and gas development in pristine
wilderness areas (undesignated yet as federal wilderness), extensive and damaging
off-road vehicle travel, haze from coal fired power plants, overgrazing, a proposed
coal mine in the center of Utah’s redrock country, and other assorted regional
and individual threats.
In canyon country, Fingergut became involved with
two of the most significant regional organizations
that have emerged — the Grand Canyon Trust and the
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). Each organization today supports a
staff of over 20 people and multimillion dollar annual budgets. Fingerhut has
been continuously on the board and intimately involved in both of these organizations
almost since the founding of each. He served as Chairman of SUWA for six years.
Fingerhut has also worked with national conservation
groups. He has been on the governing council of
The Wilderness Society since 1989, serving as chairman
from 1998 to 2002. He’s also focused his attention up north, serving on the
board of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, the largest conservation organization
in Alaska, for the past 10 years.
A graduate of the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS, Fingerhut’s connection
to the wild places he fights to protect is physical as well as spiritual. He’s
a long-time member of his local Mountain Rescue team in Colorado, is a wilderness
EMT, and still leads national backpacking outings for the Sierra Club in Utah
and the Grand Canyon. “I’ve always enjoyed the physical side of experiencing
wild places,” he says. “For me, it’s enjoying special places
as well as having a physical experience, that feeling of long, long drawn out
days that are different from what you’re doing most of the time.”
Recently, Fingerhut has delved into the educational
side of conservation, joining the NOLS Board of
Trustees in 2003. He says he supports the NOLS
experience for many reasons, but most importantly
because many graduates have turned out to be great
champions for wilderness. “A lot of my friends in the conservation
movement have greatly benefited from a NOLS education, going on to achieve premier
leadership positions,” he says.
Fingerhut continues to get out and enjoy the places
he’s worked so hard
for. “It’s very renewing for me to visit and be involved with others
in trying protect these lands. I know what the wilderness does for me, what it
does for others, and what I wish it would do for lots more people for generations
to come.”
— Kerry Brophy
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