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Wes Gillingham is one of the founders and the Program Director of Catskill Mountainkeeper, an environmental advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the Catskill Region in New York State. Wes serves on the New York Sate Forest Preserve Advisory Committee providing advice and guidance to the State Department of Environmental Conservation on managing the 3.4 million acres of state forest preserve. He also serves on the policy committee for Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York and the board of Sullivan county Farm Bureau. For ten years Wes and his wife Amy grew vegetables for 150 families through a CSA. Before Farming Wes was a Director for the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute, leading field programs in undergraduate environmental studies throughout The United States and eastern Canada and also spent ten years as a Park Ranger for the National Park Service
Today Wes and Amy are raising their two children on land that has been in his family for 55 years along with their Scottish Highland Cattle, Icelandic and Scottish Blackface Sheep. As always they are trying to build a reciprocal relationship with the land that sustains them and the greater community of the Catskill region.