Chris Marchion ~ 2014 Inductee

Chris Marchion

1952 – 

Chris became an officer in the Anaconda Sportsmen Club 1985, serving as secretary, vice president and then president. He continues to serve as vice president. He has also been the club’s representative to the Montana Wildlife Federation since 1985, holding several leadership positions including vice president of issues, president and executive board member.  He was the first MWF president to serve three terms and has tallied 28 years of contributed service to Montana’s outdoor heritage.

In 1987, Chris drafted the Bighorn Sheep auction legislation and single- handedly saw the bill to passage. The legislation raised millions of dollars for bighorn sheep conservation, from transplants to protection of critical habitat—including the purchase of 1,200 acres in the Lost Creek area.

During the 1980s, he championed protection of roadless forest lands, appearing at numerous public meetings and testifying before both the House and Senate committees. When the National Forest Plan was addressed, he participated in a historic settlement to reconcile numerous plan appeals.

When ARCO and the State of Montana agreed to a settlement on historic damages for mining and smelting on the upper Clark Fork River, Chris became active in an effort that saw 75,000 acres of critical habitat—known as the Watershed Lands—assembled to form the Mount Haggin Game range along with other public lands in the Lost Creek area.

Because of Chris’s reputation on public-land transactions, he became a mentor and advisor for others around the state on a variety of conservation projects. Those include critical Bighorn Sheep habitat in the Anaconda area as well as public access to Georgetown Lake.

During the 1990s, Chris was a vital member of a team that succeeded in banning the captive shooting of wildlife by virtue of a citizen initiative. He gathered signatures, lobbied the legislature, crafted a presentation about related diseases and spoke to numerous civic groups.

In the course of his public service, he has been appointed to a wide variety of advisory boards at both the state and federal level having to do with conservation, fish and wildlife restoration and the absolute necessity of public participation. His own “boots on the ground” participation included building infrastructure on fishing access sites, planting willows, participating in control burns of winter range, tree planting and trail maintenance.

Chris has been a constant presence for 30 years in the ongoing battle to protect the public’s right to enjoy public land and public wildlife against the people who sought to privatize or commercialize those public resources.