© Mark Oswood
Conservationists from coast to coast were saddened by the December loss of a hero who helped win wilderness designation on both sides of the nation -- Jon Soest. Jon’s legacy began in the east, when he taught Physics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. There, in 1968, he helped to found the Virginia Wilderness Committee (VWC), which works to protect outstanding wild areas on public land in Virginia. Today this group is close to seeing passage of a bill to protect 55,000 acres in the Jefferson National Forest as wilderness, wilderness study or national scenic areas, and we will have Jon Soest in part to thank.
Later in his life, Jon spent thousands of hours creating a conservation legacy in Washington State. This hiker, skier, husband, uncle and friend to so many spent decades working with organizations like the Washington Wilderness Coalition, Sierra Club, Mount Rainier National Park Associates, and the North Central Washington Audubon Society, to protect wilderness, wild lands, and watersheds.
Jon was a former board member of the Washington Wilderness Coalition, and along with his wife, Sally, played an essential role in winning the passage of several wilderness bills in Washington. First was the Washington State Wilderness Act of 1984, which designated more than a million acres of National Forest land as wilderness including the Clearwater and Mt. Baker Wilderness areas. Jon also pushed for the Washington Parks Wilderness Act, which created wilderness designations for the majority of lands within North Cascades, Olympic and Rainer National Parks, in 1988. According to Tom Uniak, Conservation Director with the Washington Wilderness Coalition, “Jon was a tenacious advocate for the places he loved and wanted to protect. He was 70 years old, but he was definitely a young 70 years. He came off as someone who was soft spoken, but he was a relentless advocate for wild places small and large.”
More recently, Jon and Sally spent more time at their cabin in Washington’s Chelan County, where Jon served as conservation chair of North Central Washington Audubon Society. “Jon spent thousands of hours representing the conservation community on numerous issues in Washington,” said Mark Oswood, president of this group. “When we needed someone to represent us with the Forest Service, on a planning commission, at a meeting, or in a workshop, Jon was there.”
Jon spent a substantial amount of his time over the past few years working on the Wenatchee River Watershed Planning process. This process was an opportunity to impact the development of management plans for all major watersheds in the state of Washington to sustain and improve watershed and community health. The North Central Washington Audubon Society was the major conservation organization involved, and Jon played a key role, serving on several subgroups and the central planning committee. Audubon’s main concern was salmon habitat, and thanks in large part to Jon’s efforts, there are several projects in the works to restore rivers and streams for salmon habitat. President Mark Oswood spoke with admiration of Jon’s dedication to this process, saying, “with such a huge coalition, compromise is necessary, and it was incredible the extent of the work that he did, the sheer amount of time that he spent involved in all these processes.”
We celebrate Jon Soest’s lifetime of work for conservation, honor him as a true wilderness hero, and will miss him deeply.
