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Executive Director Walter Medwid to Leave Wolf Organization

August 8, 2007

The International Wolf Center announced today that Walter Medwid, who has been the organization's executive director for 14 years, is leaving to return to the East Coast. In Vermont he will assume the position of executive director of the Northwoods Stewardship Center, which offers programs in environmental education and research, outdoor recreation, land management and youth employment in conservation.

Medwid took the helm of the wolf organization in 1993, shortly after the Center's Ely, MN, interpretive center opened. Under his leadership, that facility grew, adding a 3,000-square-foot wolf-viewing auditorium, classroom, children's exhibit, improved wolf enclosures, garage-wolf lab and theater. The Center recently received a $350,000 grant from the Minnesota Legislature to reconstruct the Ely building lobby when the U.S. Forest Service office is relocated from there in 2008.

Medwid moved the organization's Twin Cities office from an urban office building to a more natural setting at French Regional Park in Plymouth, MN, where development, communications and finance functions are based. During his tenure, the Center's budget grew from slightly over $500,000 to $1.5 million, and employees increased from a handful to 20. A 1996 study showed that the Center has a $3 million year annual impact on the local and regional economy of northern Minnesota.

During Medwid's tenure, the Center's mission to "advance the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future" was carried out through the Center's educational programs, curricula, International Wolf magazine, ambassador wolves and Web site at www.wolf.org. Medwid led the organization through three international symposia the third of which was held outside the Midwest in 2005, reaching into potential new wolf territory in the Southwestern U.S.

In the winter of 1996-97 he traveled to Canada to support the effort of restoring wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho. In 2004 Medwid was invited to speak when Secretary of the Interior Gayle Norton came to Minnesota to announce plans to remove well established eastern populations of wolves from the endangered species list. Earlier this year he was awarded the Silver Eagle Award from the regional office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the highest award given by the department to individuals outside the agency. In May he received, on behalf of the Center, the Cooperative Conservation Award from Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. In announcing his departure, Medwid said, "The thought of leaving the International Wolf Center is extremely difficult one for me, and I wrestled with the issue for a long time. It came down to taking on a new adventure in a landscape that is very close to my heart. Vermont is the state where my passions for the natural world materialized, and the combination of dairy farms, beautiful fields, forests and hills and, of course those trout streams, made it hard to refuse the job offer."

"Walter has provided open, honest, intelligent leadership," said the Center's Board Chair Nancy Jo Tubbs. "Recent years have proved a financial challenge for non-profit organizations, but he has guided us through with courage, fortitude and humor that raised the spirits and determination of board, staff, volunteers and organization partners. Walter is leaving the Center in very good shape."

The board of directors and staff have embarked on a national search to fill the executive director position. Marketing and Communications Director Mary Ortiz, a 20-year employee of the organization, will serve as interim executive director. New Interpretive Center Director Sharee Johnson will continue to take the lead in Ely facility operations.

Founded in 1985, the International Wolf Center is a nonprofit educational organization that advances the survival of wolf populations around the world by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future. The Center pursues this mission through educational initiatives that include a membership program, learning vacations, an interpretive center in Northern Minnesota, international conferences, youth outreach programs, teacher education resources and workshops, a quarterly magazine and a Web site, www.wolf.org.