e-mail: rk@oregonwild.org
phone: 503.283.6343 ext 210

Roadless Wildlands Advocate Robert Klavins joined the Oregon Wild team in October 2008. After earning his bachelor's degree in biology from Lawrence University and teaching outdoor education with OMSI, Rob spent an exciting year traveling around the country with Green Corps' Field School for Environmental Organizing. Through Green Corps, he worked with various environmental organizations on urgent campaigns, protecting fisheries with USPIRG in Boston, passing global warming legislation with Environment Illinois in Chicago, and stopping a coal plant with the Sierra Club in Midland, Michigan.

"I have always been inspired by nature and passionate about the outdoors," says Rob. "My earliest heroes were folks like Sigurd Olson, who fought to protect wilderness for the benefit of everyone. I had always heard great things about Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. When I finally moved here to teach outdoor education, I immediately fell in love with Oregon and its wild places. After spending two years teaching young people about Oregon's environment and then a year organizing on environmental issues in other places, I wanted to take the skills I had learned and fight for the thing that I care the most about—preserving our wild places for all people in the place that I care the most about, Oregon."

Rob works with Oregonians, businesses, and decision makers across the state to fight the detrimental environmental policies imposed by the Bush administration and to move forward to protect Oregon's remaining unprotected wildlands. "The rollback of the Roadless Conservation Rule was one of the most egregious initiatives of the last 8 years.  Fully reinstating it will be a strong and positive first step in protecting what makes Oregon a unique and attractive place to live, visit, work, play, and raise a family. I am also really excited to lead trips and share with people what exactly it is we are working to protect," says Rob.

An avid hiker, backpacker, traveler, paddler, wildlife watcher, and photographer, Rob will be combining his love of nature with his love for his fiancée, Emily, in August 2009. The two plan to marry in the Deschutes National Forest just outside of Bend.