Flannery Freund, President
Flannery Flannery comes to the board of NFPA with a passion for the North Fork, both the place and it’s people. She first came to the North Fork in 2009 as co-owner of the historic Polebridge Mercantile. There she got to know and love all the colorful characters that call one of the last intact ecosystems in the lower 48 home. During that time, she sat on the board of the North Fork Landowners Association, organized many joy-filled community events and volunteered in Glacier National Park on both wolverine and fisher research projects.
She has a B.S. in Life Sciences and Sustainability from the University of Portland. She is a retired Park Ranger for Glacier National Park, she is a founding and current Board member of Flathead Rivers Alliance, and she currently owns and operates a North Fork restaurant and music venue, Home Ranch Bottoms, with her husband. Alongside such stellar board members, she hopes keep the Crown jeweled for generations to come.
Debo Powers, Vice President
Debo is a retired public school teacher and principal who lives in a solar-powered cabin in the North Fork. She fell in love with the North Fork in 1979 because of its rugged scenic beauty, abundant wildlife, and remoteness guaranteed by the long, gravel North Fork Road. She has been hiking the trails in Glacier Park and the northern part of the Whitefish Range since 1979 and is an advocate for wild public lands.
Debo was a member of the Whitefish Range Partnership (WRP), a diverse citizen-initiated collaborative group that worked for 13 months to reach consensus on a proposal to the Flathead National Forest concerning the new Forest Plan. The WRP proposal included 80,000 acres of recommended wilderness in the Northern Whitefish Range which became part of the Flathead Forest Plan.
Debo serves in the Montana Legislature representing House District 3 which is 93% public land and includes the Whitefish Range and the western half of Glacier National Park (the entire North Fork valley), as well as state lands around the city of Whitefish.
Suzanne Daniell Hildner, MD, FACP, Secretary
Suzanne has been a part-time resident of the North Fork for over 30 years. She and her husband Richard split their time between Whitefish, MT and their much loved cabin north of Polebridge. Suzanne has been involved in conservation issues for many years. She serves as the coordinator for the Polebridge Bear Smart Program helping residents and seasonal employees co-exist with bears. A retired internist, she previously practiced medicine with Glacier Medical Associates in Whitefish. When not out hiking, fishing, running or working at endless projects, she is involved with many nonprofits.
Randy Kenyon, Treasurer, Chair of Watershed Working Group
Randy has been a Flathead Valley resident for over 40 years, actively involved in the community, highlighted by 14 years on the Kalispell City Council. After years of careful research, he determined his future was in the North Fork and purchased a small piece of property. He and his wife Donna have developed this into their off the grid “last best place”. In 2015 they sold their home in the valley and moved up to the North Fork full time, never looking back.
Randy’s community involvement did not end in Kalispell. He is vice president of the North Fork Preservation Association, after relinquishing his long term position as Secretary. His was recently elected president of the North Fork Landowners Association and is treasurer of the North Fork Trails Association. He is an avid hiker and cannot resist stumbling through the woods attempting to reestablish long forgotten trails.
Bill Walker, Media/Newsletter Editor
Bill Walker has been an NFPA member for more than 30 years, worked on the newsletter for more than 20 of those years and established the organization’s first web site. As a representative of the NFPA along with John Frederick, he participated in the negotiations leading to the Whitefish Range Partnership recommendations. This was a successful collaborative effort by a broad range of local organizations to agree on a mutually beneficial set of recommendations to the U.S. Forest Service regarding their forest planning document. An avid hiker, Bill helped establish the North Fork Trails Association and currently serves as its president.
As a North Fork full-timer and a life-long student of the natural world, Bill has a strong interest in preserving the unique character of the North Fork – both its biosphere and the singular social contract the human residents have established with their surroundings.
Polly Preston
Polly is an artist and lives full time in the beautiful North Fork with her husband John, a retired rancher and business owner ,their dog Flicka ,and two horses. They bought their property in 1984 and it has been a cherished place for their family for many years. Polly has always been an advocate of wildlife and wild places. While living in South Dakota, her farm was a sanctuary for injured and orphaned wildlife. Living in a remote intact ecosystem has evoked a passion for wilderness preservation and a desire to help defend the beauty and integrity of our precious remaining wild places.
Roger Sullivan
Over the course of the last three decades Roger’s legal career has focused on two objectives: securing justice for Montana’s workers and advocating for Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.
Roger has litigated a number of landmark cases in both the environmental and workers’ rights fields. He has been named Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Montana Trial Lawyers Association for his advocacy on behalf of Montana’s workers, and Conservationist of the Year by the Montana Environmental Information Center for his environmental advocacy.
Roger is especially proud that his clients have twice been honored with the Citizens Award by the Montana Trial Lawyers Association: the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company Profit Sharing Class Action which succeeded in securing settlements in the range of $100 million; and Libby asbestos victims recognized for their successful efforts in the courts and in defeating corporate bailout legislation at the state and national levels. His latest honor was representing youth plaintiffs in a Montana Climate lawsuit. The Montana Supreme court ruling in the nation’s first constitutional climate change trial declared the youth plaintiffs have a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment” while revoking two Montana statutes.
Roger is a long time North Forker, an avid outdoorsman and enjoys hiking, skiing, sailing, and fishing—especially with his children and grandchildren.
Kylie Heikkila
Lisa Jones McClellan
“LJ” hails from the foothills of the Adirondacks in upstate NY. She moved to the Rockies of Colorado to be a ski bum in the 80s before graduating with a BA in Communication from the University of Colorado. Settling down in Whitefish in 1989 to work at Big Mountain Ski Resort and explore Glacier National Park, she discovered the North Fork on a camping trip to Kintla Lake during her first summer, and her heart felt like it had found its home. For over three decades, LJ owned a small communications company in Whitefish serving clients in the travel, recreation and conservation fields. She is currently semi-retired and a consummate volunteer and activist for ecological and human rights causes. She and her husband Mike (who works for Glacier National Park in Fire Ecology), split their time between Whitefish and their property in the town site of Polebridge, and are both deeply passionate about protecting the landscape and pristine ecosystem of the north fork.
Sarah Ulrichsen
Sarah first came to the North Fork when she was six years old, but didn’t start coming regularly until her family bought land in the area in 2011. Since then, she has been exploring and appreciating the wild spaces that Northwest Montana has to offer by hiking, kayaking, and riding her horses in the backcountry as much as possible, even spending many years as a horseback guide in Glacier National Park.
Sarah splits her time between the North Fork and Lincoln, Nebraska, where she is a PhD student studying Natural Resource Sciences with a specialization in Human Dimensions. This area of research focuses on bridging physical and biological sciences with the social sciences in order to better understand stakeholders, and how they view, value, and depend on natural resources. Sarah hopes to continue to help protect the pristine ecosystem in the North Fork for future generations of conservationists.
Steve Gniadek
Steve is a Certified Wildlife Biologist who retired in 2009 after working over 22 years in Glacier National Park, including oversight of wildlife research and monitoring in the North Fork. He has degrees from the Universities of Michigan and Montana, and has prior experience with the Bureau of Land Management in Eastern Montana, the US Forest Service, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the Peace Corps. Despite retirement, Steve continues to be active in the Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society and several conservation organizations, and contributes to citizen science wildlife programs. As a member of the NFPA Board, Steve supports the protection of the wildlife and wild lands of the Whitefish Range and beyond.
John Frederick (May 22, 1943 – November 15, 2017), Our Founder
John Frederick was one of the founders of NFPA in March of 1982 along with Jim Hale and Ron Wilhelm.
When an open-pit coal mine in southeastern British Columbia threatened the Flathead Watershed in Montana in the 1980’s he bought stock in the company and traveled to Toronto for six yearly stockholders’ meetings, making motions to end that particular coal mine which was one of the reasons NFPA was created. The mine never opened. The other threat to the new organization was the paving of the North Fork Road with all the attendant development. The North Fork Road has never been paved, although it as has been proposed many times.
John Frederick was president of NFPA for a total of about 25 years. He has lived in the North Fork since 1980. Also he was a member of Headwaters Montana (another environmental group) and a member of the Whitefish Range Partnership that recommended how the Whitefish Range be managed. He was often referred to as the Mayor of Polebridge.