Editor’s Note: Clif Merrit passed away on August 12, 2008. All who cherish the outdoors will miss his efforts to preserve wilderness and inspire Americans to care for our wild places.

HAMILTON, MT (June 9, 2008) – The Wilderness Society today is bestowing its highest citizen’s honor, the Robert Marshall Award, on Clif Merritt of Hamilton, Montana, who helped secure wilderness for many areas in Montana and across the West and has been a tireless advocate for protecting the state’s backcountry traditions.

The award will be presented Monday evening during a private ceremony from 5 to 7pm at the Bitterroot River Inn in Hamilton. [Media may attend.]

“Clif is a passionate advocate for the preservation of our western wilderness and heritage,” said Wilderness Society President William H. Meadows. “His tireless spirit to conserve wildlife and wilderness created a legacy that Americans and Montanans will enjoy and appreciate for generations.”

The Robert Marshall Award goes to a person who has devoted long-term service to, and has had a notable influence upon, conservation and the fostering of an American land ethic. Marshall founded The Wilderness Society in 1935, along with A Sand County Almanac author Aldo Leopold, Appalachian Trail creator Benton MacKaye, and five other conservation leaders. Marshall was a prominent thinker and leader in the wilderness movement in the 1920s and 1930s.

Merritt is the 23rd winner of the award, joining an elite group that includes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner, Terry Tempest Williams, Arnold Bolle, Stewart Brandborg, former EPA head Russell Peterson. Mardi Murie, and Charles Crane Bradley and Nina Leopold Bradley (jointly).

Merritt grew up near the Gates of the Mountains along the upper Missouri River, where he soon observed that the best hunting and fishing often was found beyond the end of the road.  Merritt, now 89, worked for many years as state and federal government employee and served as an officer in the Flathead Lake Wildlife Association and the Montana Wildlife Federation; and also helped found the Montana Wilderness Association in 1958.

He then served as national field director for The Wilderness Society from 1964 to 1978, helping pass the Wilderness Act of 1964.  While at The Wilderness Society, Merritt helped start a vigorous field program that hired staff across the West to initiate and coordinate grass roots efforts to expand the wilderness system.  As a conservation leader over the years, Merritt was deeply involved in efforts to designate the Scapegoat, Absaroka-Beartooth, River of No Return, Lee Metcalf, and many other areas as wilderness.

Merritt was a founder of American Wildlands in 1978 and later became its executive director.  At American Wildlands, Merritt initiated a groundbreaking scientific program to identify essential corridors for larger wildlife migration.  This program, which utilized some of the first satellite mapping/imaging of the Rocky Mountains, showed the importance of migration corridors to big game and other wildlife as they respond to seasons and changes in environmental conditions.

“Clif’s achievements are an incredible example for all of us,” noted Northern Rockies Regional Director Bob Ekey.  “He is a true leader; a humble and determined man whose accomplishments could span many careers.”

The award to Merritt is inscribed: “Robert Marshall gave us a vision of enduring American wilderness and a movement to make it real.  Through your remarkable career, you have done much to advance that vision.  Your tireless advocacy and generosity of spirit – born of an unerring ethical imperative to bequeath our great wilderness heritage to the future – shaped a new generation of grassroots leaders who grounded the poetry and majesty of the Wilderness Act in the land.  They and their lineage are an incalculable gift and unending legacy to our movement.  With profound heart and wisdom you have illuminated the path of conservation, and we are most deeply in your debt.”

The Wilderness Society’s mission is to protect wilderness and inspire Americans to care for our wild places.  Founded in January 1935 by Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, and six other visionaries, the organization has 400,000 members and supporters.