Kaniksu Land Trust (KLT) has established a connection in Montana by hiring its first dedicated staff member to lead conservation and recreation in the Sanders County portion of its service area. A press release from late February named Kayla Mosher as KLT's new Recreation and Outreach Coordinator.

"As a very significant portion of KLT's conservation work unfolds along the wild rivers and in the shadow of the Cabinet Mountains of Sanders County, we are delighted to now have a staff person based in Thompson Falls to support the mission and vision of our organization," KLT conservation director Regan Plumb said in a press release.

Mosher's position will entail coordinating with community partners to establish a downtown park development plan. She will also lead the process of implementing activities that drive economic development through outdoor recreation in Sanders County.

In 2020, KLT participated in a community wide process in Sanders County called Recreation Economy for Rural Communities (RERC), which was sponsored by the EPA in order to set the stage for the creation of the position.

Among the organizations KLT partnered with while applying for RERC in order to create the Recreation and Outreach Coordinator position was Sanders County Community Development (SCCD). "We were seeing too many organizations with different interests all trying to accomplish the same thing," said SCCD executive director Ray Brown. "We started to see this overlap and the questions just kept coming up. 'Who could run point on this and whose responsibility would this be?'"

While the task at hand couldn't fall on only one organization to make an impact in Thompson Falls and to attack the situation with intention, Brown says a position needed to be created with the sole purpose of improving outdoor recreation. "It's just not improving outdoor recreation, but improving access to it, improving education toward the importance of it and how to do it responsibly," he said.

Born and raised in Butte, Mosher attended the University of Montana where she augmented her double-major in Parks Tourism and Recreation Management and Resource Conservation with a minor in Wilderness Studies. The daughter of a Special Olympics coach, Mosher's father helped instill the powerful effect that the outdoors has on people's physical, mental and emotional wellness. "I wanted to do that too, not just with sports, but with all outdoor recreation," Mosher said.

The Recreation and Outreach Coordinator role will allow Mosher to pour her passion into the community she loves, while sharing the unique qualities of Thompson Falls that she loves the most. "Kayla will be focused on helping everyone spend more time outdoors enjoying the many natural amenities that Sanders County has to offer," KTL executive director Katie Cox said in the press release. "She's perfect for this role. She has a deep passion for helping her community and has already hit the ground running.

After moving to her husband's hometown of Thompson Falls, Mosher worked on a trail crew for the U.S. Forest Service as well as other jobs to help support her family. The difficulty of finding gainful employment in an economically challenged community didn't keep her from looking for a career that would allow her to pursue her love for outdoor recreation.

Mosher says she's looking forward to helping people access the special places of Northwest Montana while maintaining the goal of nurturing her community's economic stability. "Some people may wonder why a land trust is involved with economic development," Cox said. "Making urban centers more livable helps KLT to protect and keep open working forest, farm and ranch land. Increasing awareness and access to the outdoors is central to our mission of caring for the lands and people of the Kaniksu Region today, tomorrow and forever."

The KLT office of Recreation and Outreach is located in the Clark Fork Professional Building in Thompson Falls. Mosher has begun preliminary work in her post and says her first week on the job has been good. "I'm just working on getting caught up with what's been in the works so far," she said. "I've also been working on getting my office established and getting my name out there."

For more information, call Mosher at (406) 285-1215 or email [email protected].