2012 Board of Directors

Friends of Gold Butte is lucky to have such a passionate Board of Directors:

• Tony Barron recently retired to Mesquite and the Gold butte area from Salt Lake City. There, he was an active member and activity organizer for hikes and snowshoes with the Wasatch Mountain Club for 15 years. Before moving to Utah from the Chicago area, he was an active caver, skier and canoeist for decades. He served on the board of directors of the Windy City Grotto in several positions, including Chairman, for several years. He also served as chairman of the canoeing committee and on the board of directors of AYH (which at the time was perhaps the primary multi-activity outdoors club in Chicago.) Having enjoyed wilderness and wild lands on rivers and lakes, mountain tops and cave bottoms, he has now learned to enjoy the desert after moving to Mesquite. Having been active with Friends of Gold Butte for over a year, he joined its Board of Directors in January and is looking forward to the challenge of securing protection for Gold Butte’s many and varied spectacular assets.
• Tom Cluff was born in New Mexico but spent most of his life in Arizona. His teenage years were spent on a cattle ranch near Prescott, AZ, and at a young age he developed a habit of lone wandering on horseback or afoot, a habit that still persists. Tom first visited Mesquite in 1982 but didn’t really become familiar until 2000 when a career move took him to Ogden, UT. Since then the Mesquite area had been his escape from the winter blues of living in the snowy north. When he retired from a career with the US Forest Service, Mesquite was his first choice of a place to live and play. He loves the Gold Butte area for exploring and wandering, and a place to find peace and serenity, in addition to beautiful scenery. He finds special joy in climbing a mountain top or high ridge line where the lower country is revealed in breath-taking beauty. His hope is that Gold Butte and similar wild areas will be preserved so future generations can have the same awesome experiences he enjoys today.
• Roger DiRosa worked in various government programs that began with law enforcement for the National Park Service and search and rescue ranger on numerous national wildlife refuges and Department of Defense installations across the U.S. He spent 16 years working on tropical insular and coral reef management programs, where he helped establish and manage the Caribbean Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex and the Guam National Wildlife Refuge. He has a long history of working closely with politicians and high level military personnel on sensitive and high profile natural resource programs/issues and has testified to congress on several occasions regarding inter-agency conflicts and natural resource management. His last station was on the Mexican border where he worked with Homeland Security and other federal agencies to manage the nation’s most conflicted wilderness unit including 56 miles of remote Mexican border. Roger maintains strong interests in wilderness and conservation issues, and often volunteers on back country research projects. He is an avid backpacker, canoeist and kayaker.
• Ken Elliott spent his career in the information technology industry. He recently retired from the state of Utah after 30 years of service. Ken enjoyed living in the Salt Lake area hiking, biking and skiing the great Wasatch Front. Realizing in retirement his strong distaste for Utah beer, Ken now resides Mesquite enjoying the same great outdoor activities minus shoveling snow.
• Terri Rylander is a freelance marketing communication and web consultant with a passion for conservation—protecting our natural and historical resources or future generations. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, she finds everything about the desert, and Gold Butte, fascinating as well as precious. She enjoys getting outdoors, filling all five senses with nature, through hiking and photography. Terri is fortunate to have a career that is flexible and allows her to spend time both in Mesquite, Nevada and Redmond, Washington. She does much of the communication for Friends of Gold Butte, including the website, Facebook, Twitter, and the email newsletter, and looks forward to the day when Gold Butte receives its National Conservation Area with Wilderness designation.

We are always looking for additional volunteers to help lead hikes, share information about Gold Butte at community events, help with desert restoration projects, and more. If you’d be interested in being on the volunteer list, please drop us an email at: friendsofgoldbutte@gmail.com