Conservation trailblazer inspires new Alaska rapid response fund

Published 4:30 am Wednesday, August 12, 2026

The Alaska Conservation Foundation (ACF) has launched a living tribute to one of the state’s most influential conservation organizers who is now struggling with Parkinson’s disease.

AFC announced the creation of the Bart Koehler Rapid Response Fund last month to celebrate Koehler’s more than four decades of wildlands organizing.

Koehler helped build the grassroots movement behind the Tongass Timber Reform Act, and helped defend those protections when they came under attack in Congress five years later, bringing a lasting change to how the Tongass is managed.

“Alaska is where his work met its greatest tests, and its greatest victories,” said Michael Barber, ACF president and CEO. “This fund is our way of keeping that model alive for the next generation of Alaskans standing up for their public lands.”

The fund will channel gifts through ACF’s existing Rapid Response Grant Program, ACF’s longest standing grant program that has moved over $180,000 to frontline organizations over the past two years.

“Rapid Response grants provide quick support for direct advocacy during urgent legislative or regulatory windows, ensuring organizations can participate in key policy decisions that shape Alaska’s future,” ACF stated.

Koehler began his career as a wilderness organizer in Wyoming in the early 1970s with The Wilderness Society, where he was mentored by Mardy Murie and Celia Hunter — both well-known Alaskan conversationalists. In 1977, Hunter assigned Koehler to help mobilize communities across the west in support of the National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

He moved to Alaska in 1984 to lead the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC), which was the beginning of a 32-year relationship with the organization as both director and a board member through politically tumultuous times for the Tongass National Forest.

“Working alongside SEACC staff, volunteers, and members, he helped build the grassroots movement that led to the passage of the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990, which protected 1.4 million acres of Southeast Alaska’s most productive fish and wildlife habitat,” ACF stated.

Koehler received ACF’s Olaus Murie Award for outstanding professional contributions in 1990, and accepted the foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

Jim Stratton, one of Alaska’s past leaders of the conservation movement, said that Koehler is a wildlands rock star.

“His strategic leadership and easygoing manner of working with people from all walks of life led to thousands and thousands of acres of Alaska being protected for generations to come,” he said.

ACF is inviting anyone who worked with Koehler, was mentored by him, or shares his commitment to Alaska’s wilderness to help build the new fund. Gifts to the Bart Koehler Rapid Response Fund help make conservation movement efforts possible.

“I use the things Bart taught me about organizing people for positive change every single day,” added Tim Bristol, executive director of SalmonState.

Those interested can contribute at alaskaconservation.org or by contacting Anna Dalton at adalton@alaskaconservation.org or 907-433-8213.