Co-Founder & Former President of the California Lichen Society, Bill Hill
On July 25th, 2013, Wild Willpower’s founder, Distance Everheart, received this letter from Mr. Bill Hill, co-founder & longtime President of The California Lichen Society (CaliforniaLichens.org):
(Click to enlarge.)
“To whom this may concern:
My name is Bill Hill, and I am one of the founding members of the California Lichen Society (“CALS” for short: http://californialichens.org/about/). For many years I have been involved with nature study, and most recently especially studying lichens and teaching others about their history and the intricacies of lichen identification. CALS has touched the lives of many people, and helped to raise peoples’ awareness and appreciation of lichens, which is a first step in creating lasting conservation efforts.
I first met A’dra “Distance Everheart” Wilson in the spring of 2010, and she showed immediate interest in lichen identification and learning anything she could about them. Between field studies in the southern Sierra mountains with Richard Lonewolf, she has attended CALS workshops at College of Marin and Tilden Park in Berkeley, has volunteered at several of our booths at U.C. Berkeley, and has developed quite a knowledge of lichens and become quite adept at lichen identification. She has documented many lichens with us during the events.
During this time, she conceived of a system that could greatly help the science of lichen identification. Several of us have wanted to see online lichen identification keys made available and Distance came up with a way to make online lichen identification a much simpler process, including GPS and elevation-specific information using smartphones, as well as rollover-&-view glossary definitions. I have opened my home to her for the past 3 years so that she could develop the outline for WildWillpower.org & WildLivingSkills.org, and during this time she has worked very diligently on developing the foundation of an organization to upkeep the development of this database & smartphone app.
I would like to give my personal endorsement to her personal credibility as well as the value of her projects, including www.WildWillpower.org & www.WildLivingSkills.org. I would like to see these projects funded and continued, as she is helping to coordinate a resource that will be very useful to lichenology and helping to make it more accessible to many more people in a user-friendly way. This will help garner further appreciation for lichens and help further in conservation efforts.
Sincerely,
[signed]
Bill Hill”
Thank you Bill & all The California Lichen Society members!!!
