STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move” blared across the lawn at Trail Creek Cabin Monday night as members of the Sun Valley Forum toasted one of America’s pioneer eco-warriors.

King, who has spent decades fighting for the environment herself, presented the Sun Valley Forum’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award to Brock Evans, who had a long career in Washington State and Washington, D.C., as an advocate with the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society and the Endangered Species Coalition, helping to pass the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

“Today, for some, that’s in question so we must fight even harder,” she said. “The government spends billions of dollars on clearcutting. And this year they fired our neighbors under the pretense of saving money. They say they need to log lands for housing, but these lands provide housing for beetles and other wildlife.”

King called Evans one of the most effective warriors in the history of conservation movement.

“We have seen Brock do the impossible, and we can, too, following his principle: Endless pressure, endlessly applied,” King told the audience. “I’ve worked for the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and everyone says, ‘You’ll never get that passed.’ And we haven’t … yet.”

Evans’ autobiography, “Endless Pressure, Endlessly Applied,” documents his 50-year career campaigning to save such wilderness areas as the North Cascades, Sawtooth National Recreation Area, Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, Hells Canyon, the John Day River, Gospel Hump Wilderness, Selway Wilderness and more.

 Monday night, after noting that Sun Valley was as beautiful as ever, he told the audience that the best phone call he ever made in 1961 when he agreed to take a job at Glacier National Park following college. He arrived a week later, after journeying thousands of miles across the prairie.

“I had no idea the country was so big.”

In Seattle, he said, he discovered the North Cascades, Olympic National Park and “all these places to climb.” And he was spurred to activism in 1966 when he stepped out of his warned of a pending clearcut.

“These big giants that would never come back. That unleashed a passion in me,” said Evans, who now lives in LaGrande, Ore.

Evans said he is reminded of the differences he has helped make. But he’s also reminded of places where the simple pleasure of passing a field of wildflower is gone, turned into a strip mall.

“We’ve protected 220 million acres, and the Endangered Species Act stands tall. It’s still there, and we will continue to fight to keep it,” he said. “Every place in the nation that is now preserved for all of us didn’t just happen.

He encouraged those in the audience to be “keepers of the door,” ushering species through that door into safety.

“It’s still a beautiful planet and it’ still needs us.”

Read more about the event and the other Award Recipients HERE