Welcome from Friends of Big Bend National Park!

Thank you Brown Foundation! Friends of Big Bend National Park is pleased to announce a $50,000 grant from the Brown Foundation.  This grant is for our Paleontology Exhibit Campaign, which will expand and improve the park's paleontology exhibit facilities.   This brings our total to $105,000 raised for this important campaign - only $250,000 left to go for Phase 1!
Big Bend Ultra Run 2012 - Registration is closed - good luck racers! Registration for the Run is now closed.  We wish all runners the best of health and safe travels.  See you out in the park! The race will be held Sunday, January 15, 2012. Our sincere thanks to the many volunteers who are working hard to prepare for this race - and special kudos to our sponsors:  AimBank, Airport Printing, Big Bend Regional Medical Center, Cavender, Culligan Southwest, Dr. and Mrs. Stuart Crane, Fleet Feet Sports, Forever Resorts, Hammer Nutrition, Lee Dunkelburg, Marmot, Morrison True Value,  Osprey, Petzl, Salomon, Sole, Suunto, Texas Mountain Trail and Whole Earth Provision.  We could not make this race happen without everything they do for us! National Public Lands Day 2011 was a great success! Many thanks to our wonderful sponsors and volunteers who made National Public Lands Day a success.  We accomplished both a land restoration project and a library archiving project before enjoying a pizza lunch and presentation from park staff on the founding of the park.  Thanks to our great sponsors Culligan Southwest, Forever Resorts, Guzzi Pizza and Saint Arnold Rootbeer for making this a wonderful weekend! Welcome New Board Members! At our September board meeting, the Friends elected a new slate of officers and six new board members.  We welcome new board members Matthew Bell of San Antonio, Ann Kovich of Fort Worth, Don Lewis of Waco, Susan Madere of Austin, Paul Nugent of Houston and Dixie Watkins of San Antonio.  We look forward to their service to the park and the Friends! New officers:  Dennis Kearns - VP Development, Jan Redford - Secretary, Greg Brazaitis - President, Chris Thompson - VP Membership, Richard Sawey - Treasurer; not pictured:  Tex Toler - VP Communications Reliant Want to help Big Bend National Park and offset your carbon footprint at the same time? Reliant Energy and EarthShare of Texas have launched The Reliant EcoShareSM, a program that allows Reliant customers to support EarthShare of Texas and its participating organizations and help reduce the customers’ carbon footprints through the purchase of carbon offsets.
Here’s how it works: The Reliant EcoShareSM program gives customers the option of two pricing levels:
  • For a flat monthly cost of $3.95, a $1 donation is made each month to EarthShare of Texas, and 500 pounds of carbon offsets are purchased.
  • Or for a flat monthly cost of $5.95, a $2 donation is made each month to EarthShare of Texas, and 1,000 pounds of carbon offsets are purchased.
Friends of Big Bend benefits, because as one of EarthShare of Texas’ participating organizations, a portion of the Reliant donation is shared with us. Carbon offsets for the Reliant EcoShareSM program meet approved standards to ensure that they represent real, verifiable reductions in greenhouse gases.  Our thanks to Reliant for creating a program that provides benefits for the Texas environment!
The Friends receive $40,000 from the Meadows Foundation Friends of Big Bend National Park is pleased to receive a grant from the Meadows Foundation for a wetlands restoration project in the Rio Grande Village area.  This project will restore over 50 acres of wetlands that will provide great habitat for birds and the federally endangered mosquitofish. The Friends Receive $12,500 from the Permian Basin Area Foundation The Friends have received a grant from the Permian Basin Area Foundation, our first grant in our $375,000 Paleontology Campaign.  We are pleased to be on our way to raising much needed funds to update this family-friendly exhibit.  To learn more about this project click here. Friends provide $37,000 in grants At the June board meeting of the Friends of Big Bend, the board voted unanimously to provide $37,000 in funding to the park for two projects.  The first is $32,000 for staff members at the new Boquillas crossing station slated to open next spring.  The remaining $5,000 will pay for event, meeting and travel costs incurred by the Big Bend Rio Bravo Project throughout the rest of 2011.  This project will lead to longer term protection, scientific efforts, collaborative projects and potential tourism with the Mexican protected areas across the border from the park.

GoodSearch Are you on the internet every day?  If so, you can help Friends of Big Bend National Park while you are doing internet searches or internet shopping.

Friends of Big Bend National Park earns a penny every time you searched the Internet from the GoodSearch website.  GoodSearch.com is a Yahoo-powered search engine that donates half its advertising revenue, about a penny per search, to the charities its users designate.  Use it just as you would any search engine, get quality search results from Yahoo and help Big Bend National Park while you do it!  Just go to www.goodsearch.com and enter Friends of Big Bend as the charity you want to support!