2008 Scholar

Cleo A. Woelfle-Erskine
University of Montana

Cleo Woelfle-Erskine is a teacher, journalist, creek restorer, and founder of the Greywater Guerrillas, the Urban Wilds Project, and the Watershed Guides. His writing and teaching unites alternative technology, urban sustainability, and water struggles in a context of community self-determination and ecological restoration. Cleo grew up amidst filled-in marshes and concrete-channeled rivers in a faulted basin on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. He moved to Missoula in 2007 to research how the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers respond to dam removal for a senior thesis at the University of Montana. His most recent book, Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground, combines a decade of the Greywater Guerrillas’ ecological sanitation innovation with dispatches from water and dam struggles worldwide.

How can you describe a weekend of student leaders from across the U.S. with an intense passion to change the world? The Orientation was a phenomenal experience to meet and build connections that I'm sure will last a lifetime.

Emily Bacha, 2009 Udall Scholar