Welcome to Meredith Taylor

by Nancy Debevoise

WOC's newest staff member is no stranger to conservationists in the northern Rockies. Meredith Taylor, Greater Yellowstone Program field office director, has worked closely with WOC and other conservation groups for two decades, fighting with tenacity to prevent the industrialization of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) and to protect the region's wild places and wild creatures.

Meredith recently left the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, where she was a Wyoming field representative for nearly seven years, working to stop environmentally destructive oil and gas development on national forests and BLM lands and to safeguard threatened and endangered wildlife species, particularly grizzly bears. At WOC, Meredith will continue to address threats to public lands in the GYE, including oil and gas development, roads and timber sales.

Born in upstate New York, Meredith earned her BS degree from Colby-Sawyer College and continued her studies in biology and chemistry at Harvard. After a stint in the Peace Corps, where she worked with indigenous people in the Amazon on communicable disease prevention, she moved to Dubois to study the area's large herd of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

Shortly after she arrived, she met Tory Taylor, who had ridden horseback from Colorado to Wyoming, searching for a quiet place in the mountains to put down roots. They were married in 1978 and later bought a small ranch on the Wind River.

"Our idyllic bubble was burst in 1980," recalls Meredith, "when we learned that the Shoshone National Forest planned to lease the Washakie Wilderness for oil and gas. We were outraged. How dare they even consider such a thing in a designated wilderness?!"

The Taylors quickly joined WOC and the Wyoming Wildlife Federation and went to work as volunteer activists, beginning what was to become a lifelong commitment to protecting wilderness, wildlife, quality hunting and fishing and clean air and water in the GYE.

But volunteer efforts don't put food on the table, so the Taylors started an outfitting business. "It was a great way to justify having a lot of horses and doing what we loved best, taking wilderness horsepack trips into the Winds and Absarokas each summer and fall," Meredith says. Nearly two decades later, Taylor Outfitting is still going strong, and Meredith and Tory never tire of sharing the wonders of the GYE with guests from all over the country, teaching natural history and Leave No Trace horse camping.

"It's important to work hard at fighting for the land, but also to play hard in the special places we're dedicated to protecting, so that we don't burn ourselves out," she says. "The GYE has some of the best open spaces in the world to canoe, hike, backcountry ski, soak in hot springs, climb peaks, hear wolves, see grizzlies and generally renew one's spirit."

"I'm excited about joining the staff of one of the most effective conservation groups in the West," Meredith says with her trademark enthusiasm. "WOC is unmatched in its ability to combine science and the law to protect Wyoming's open spaces, environment and our quality of life. I'm proud to be part of the WOC team."