Columbia Bioregional Education Project, Jere and Rick Gillespie — Read The Dirt Read The Dirt

Columbia Bioregional Education Project, Jere and Rick Gillespie

Columbia Bioregional Education Project, Jere and Rick Gillespie    Jere and Rick Gillespie have published environmental and cultural news relating to the upper Columbia River Bioregion since 1987. We co-founded a 501(c)(3), the Columbia River Bioregional Education Project, and published Columbiana Magazine until 2001. In addition, our organization participated in Forest Watch, helped establish the Okanogan Highlands Alliance which monitors the Buckhorn Mountain Gold Mine; and Jere served nine years on the Okanogan River Watershed Plan Stakeholders Group. (The Similkameen River enters the Okanogan River at Oroville (6 miles from the Canadian border), and contributes up to 75% of the flow of the Okanogan River. Rick Gillespie was an instructor at Wenatchee Valley College, Omak, and both Rick and Jere Gillelspie taught for five years at Colville Tribal College on the Colville Indian Reservation. They are now retired at their family home in the tiny mountain village of Chesaw, in the Okanogan Highlands.