Wendell - a natural life
Wendell Wood was a dedicated environmental advocate, committed naturalist, and teacher. Though most known for his decades spent as a board member, staffer, and volunteer for Oregon Wild, Wendell helped to form or support dozens of conservation groups in Oregon and California over the years.
Wendell and his wife Kathy came to Oregon in 1976 after he accepted a job as a high school biology teacher in Myrtle Creek. After five years of teaching, Wendell joined the board of the Oregon Wilderness Coalition and began one of the most effective conservation careers in Oregon history.
In 1982, Wendell became President of the board and oversaw the organizations’ renaming to Oregon Natural Resources Council. It didn’t take long for Wendell to assume a role on staff, heading up Environmental Education Programs for ONRC and eventually becoming an integral part of the watchdog role of the organization.
Working first out of the Eugene office and later pioneering the organization’s work in Klamath Falls, Wendell and the ONRC team began systematically appealing illegal timber sales – at one point filing over 100 in a single day. Wendell established a reputation as one of the hardest working, tenacious, and lovable advocates for Oregon’s environment.“I feel like there will always be somebody else out there who will be willing to negotiate, [that] they'll be willing to give things up,” Wendell explained in 1997 as part of a Crater Lake oral history project. “What I think is harder is to say ‘no.’ ONRC has been asked why we are so confrontational, [and] the answer is ‘I don't wish to be confrontational, I just don't know anybody else that is willing to do it.’”
Upon relocating to Klamath Falls in 1993, Wendell took up the cause of the region’s forgotten National Wildlife Refuges and endangered endemic fish species – playing a central role in ESA listings for the short-nosed and Lost River suckers.
Time and again in Wendell’s career at Oregon Wild he would voluntarily forego paychecks to ensure there were resources to hire other staff to carry out yet more conservation work. Thus, it was fitting that when Wendell “retired” from the organization well over a decade ago that he continued to work incessantly for free.
In recent years, Wendell became well known among Oregon’s budding amateur naturalists as a captivating trip leader willing to freely share his deep knowledge of the Oregon landscape and its species. Leading birding trips from his cabin adjacent to Klamath Marsh as well as mushroom and wildflower identification hikes across the state, Wendell’s love for the natural world was a gift he passed on to thousands.
“We know every line on the map, somebody fought for that area…but nobody remembers who or when,” Wendell relayed during the oral history project. “Other places people just sort of assume that it's always been a state park or always been protected, and who would destroy anything as magnificent as that, you know. [For] every one of these places, there's somebody who stood up for it or it wouldn't be there.”
We will remember you Wendell – forever. And we are grateful for the countless places that you stood up for.