2023 Cx3 & NLC
Over 300 TU volunteers, including Tammy Packie, newly elected State Council Rep for the National Leadership Council, TU staff, anglers and conservationists from around the country attended CX3 in September to celebrate coldwater, conservation, and community on the Spokane River in Washington. CX3 2023 showcased partnerships with the Nez Perce Tribe, Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing and others to emphasize the importance of collaboration to address complex environmental challenges. Fishing on rivers with local volunteers (Tammy went with the leader of the Gonzaga Costa 5 Rivers group to learn about their activities), a stream clean-up with the Spokane Riverkeepers, the Annual Awards banquet and Members Meeting, and casting with Spokane Women On The Fly (Tammy tried fly-casting for the first time!) were fun activities for all ages.
The focus of Cx3 2023 was removing the lower four Snake River Dams. Participants were given a tour of Lower Granite Dam, engaged in insightful discussions, workshops, and viewed the powerful film Covenant of the Salmon People to help understand the critical issues surrounding these dams. Thank you to all the presenters, including our keynote speaker, Nez Perce Chairman Shannon Wheeler. Attendees left CX3 armed with knowledge to advocate for the removal of the lower four Snake River Dams to recover Idaho’s salmon and steelhead.
New NLC chair Rich Thomas and vice chair Sharon Sweeney Fee have been working with each NLC group to create charter documents to be used as guidelines for goals and a schedule for accomplishments over a 5 year time span. There are currently 11 NLC Work Group Committees, with the possibility of one to be added for Priority Waters. A reminder NLC is featuring one work group per month in Lines to Leaders.
NLC Survey:
You should all have received this by now. It takes 5-10 minutes to complete. It is designed to self assess individuals as to their knowledge of what the NLC does for TU. A similar survey was done in 2014 and Rich wanted a comparison to help guide the direction of the NLC going forward.
NLC would like all chapter leaders to visit the Forums sections on the TU.org website, log in, and look around. The easiest way is to go to community.tu.org and log in with your TU password. Under my communities tab there are Forums; regional, open forum, NLC, etc.
NLC is also working to standardize names of documents and create libraries of documents and photos that can be used by TU council/chapters.
NLC asks all chapter leaders to verify their list of leaders on tu.org. If help is needed you may send the list to me and I will help.\
Learn about TU goals for the future by watching Chris Wood’s State of Trout Unlimited presentation on YouTube. Next year’s CX3 is in the Twin Cities, MN. from Sept. 25 – 29 2024.