Outdoor Allies: Meghan Wolf — Outdoor Alliance

Outdoor Alliance’s Outdoor Allies series features Meghan Wolf, Patagonia’s Senior Manager for Environmental Campaigns. Meghan is based in Reno, Nevada and focuses on Patagonia’s land and water efforts. She also oversees the company’s employee activism efforts in Reno.

What do you like to do outside and how did you first get connected with the outdoors?

There are so many things I like to do outside, I probably can’t list them all but will start with trail running, swimming, mountain biking, alpine skiing, cross country skiing, and hiking.

I connected with the outdoors at a young age. Growing up in North Carolina, I’d play all day in the woods with my best friend, playing in the creeks and climbing trees. We didn’t have a way to let our parents know where we were, and we’d simply come home before dark. My family also spent summers camping in the Blue Ridge mountains and going to the coast.

Tell us about some of the environmental campaigns you’ve worked on at Patagonia—which ones have stood out to you over the years?

Three campaigns have stood out in particular:

Three major ongoing campaigns in Alaska include stopping oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and now in the Western Arctic, as well as defending the Brooks Range against the construction of Ambler Road. We’ve also campaigned to protect the Tongass from old growth logging, and to prevent a massive copper and gold mine at the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.

Our campaign on the Snake River also stands out to me, because I started with Patagonia working retail in the Boston store in 1999 while I worked on a graduate degree in a completely different field. It struck me that this company would rather have me spend time talking to customers about submitting comments to remove dams on a river before selling more ski jackets or fleece, and I was hooked. I spent 12 years managing in retail. Today I am managing our Snake River dam removal campaign effort, and though it’s been 25 years, we are closer to dam removal now, and there is an amazing coalition of grassroots and grass tops groups persistently and diligently working to see this through.

Protecting Nevada’s public lands also stands out, because it’s where I cut my teeth working on land issues in the West. Coming from the East, I’d never learned about public lands and didn’t know what the term meant. I started volunteering for Friends of Nevada Wilderness soon after I moved to Reno. We’d go out on stewardship trips, repairing incursions in Wilderness areas, reseeding native plants and advocating for additional land and water conservation. The most recent effort we supported was the establishment of Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. We are eager to support efforts that include tribal co-management of these lands.

“I often hear that Patagonia is so unique, and while I want us to be unique in our product line, I don’t want our environmental activism and sustainability efforts to be unique.”

Patagonia is deeply admired in the nonprofit advocacy space for its commitment to conservation, sustainability, and advocacy issues. Do you have advice you’d give to others in the outdoor industry about doing more in the advocacy space. What do you wish other businesses would take from Patagonia to their advocacy work?

I often hear that Patagonia is so unique, and while I want us to be unique in our product line, I don’t want our environmental activism and sustainability efforts to be unique. I’d love to see more companies do what we do. But I see companies getting cold feet as they prioritize everything around the bottom line. My advice to other companies is to summon the courage to take more risks and be bolder in their efforts. Do not fear the bottom line when considering how to implement activist efforts. Patagonia has benefited every time it has taken a bold step – switching to organic cotton, investing in supply chain sustainability, investing in employees – including providing paid time to engage in activist efforts – and committing 1% of sales (before profits) and setting up a team to allocate that money to grassroots groups working on issues every day. We are still a profitable company and have proven that it can be done. It’s a matter of will on the part of other companies. It can be done. It’s a matter of choosing to do it. That requires leadership – the kind that Yvon Chouinard has laid out and written about for others to follow. There’s great advice in The Responsible Company and Let My People Go Surfing.

I know climate and conservation work can be overwhelming for many. What gives you hope and optimism about advocacy work right now?

Meeting people face-to-face and doing the groundwork with them is what fuels my hope and optimism. I can read about what’s going on, which is sometimes helpful and often disheartening, but it’s in the doing where I find the sweet spot of bringing our hopes, our ideas and our imaginations about a better world into reality. We need each other as humans, and we need to come together, rolling up sleeves and working together rather than ranting from behind a screen.

Lightning round (one or two word answers!)

Favorite close to home spot – Mt. Rose wilderness

Most used piece of gear – (that’s tough!) Houdini – not counting capilene underwear, which I wear daily 😊

A book you love – Braiding Sweetgrass