Join us for our biweekly Community Potluck Dinners and Music Jam Sessions at Mountain Brook Community Center*, 2353 Foothill Road, Kalispell, MT.

The sessions are open to all skill levels and to those wishing to listen rather than play.

We meet on alternating Sundays, sometimes with exceptions for holidays and other events, so check the list of dates below for upcoming sessions.

Potluck begins at 5 pm, followed by acoustic music until 8-ish.

Upcoming music:

Aug 30
Sep 12 Saturday Pie Social 4-7pm
Sep 20
Oct 4
Oct 18
Nov 1
Nov 15
Nov 29
Dec 13
Dec 27

Please be considerate of others' health. If you have recently been exposed to COVID, please do not attend.

*Community Center rental fees go to restore the historic Mountain Brook Schoolhouse next door and meet Community Center operating expenses.

We hope you can come join us for our 40th Anniversary potluck and gathering on June 9 at the Creston Fish Hatchery pavilion on the shore of Jessup Mill Pond! There will be cake and we get to eat it too!

The gathering will begin around 2pm with short walks on various, mostly-flat trails around Jessup Mill Pond and the Fish Hatchery. It will be a great time of year for bird-watching as the trails take us through forests, meadows and wetlands! Don’t miss the views of the nearby Swan Range!

Around 4pm, Keith Hammer will provide us with a history of Swan View Coalition and its major accomplishments, as well as his time growing up at the Fish Hatchery, which instilled in him a strong conservation ethic. He’ll also touch on the history of the old Jessup townsite where the fish hatchery and government offices now sit.

At 5pm, we’ll continue socializing over a potluck dinner! So bring your place setting, a dish and a cooler if it needs to be kept cold during our walks and talks. There is electricity at the pavilion for a hot pot or hot plate, a nice campground-style vault toilet, but no potable water.

After dinner, a few members of the Swan Range Jammers will provide acoustic music as we unwind. The pavilion offers a large roof for shelter but bring warm clothes should the weather be inclement.

To find the pavilion, turn onto Creston Hatchery Road from either end, Hwy 35 or Lake Blaine Road, then turn onto Kauffman Lane just south of the hatchery and pond. It’s about one-eighth mile down the road, toward the Swan Range.

This will not be an indoor meeting with a boring slide show. We hope you can join us for as long as suits you on the land that gave rise to Swan View Coalition!

For more about our 40 years of accomplishments, see our Winter-Spring 2024 newsletter.

This is the last call to have your donation matched by Cinnabar Foundation!

Won't you DONATE NOW to help us restore quiet habitats for fish, wildlife and people? Your donation will do double-duty if received this week!

And don't forget our Annual Membership Meeting is Sunday, November 22, at 4 pm. Join us at the Mountain Brook School Library, 2353 Foothill Road, for a quick recap of our accomplishments and election of officers. At 5 pm we'll have a potluck dinner and no-alcohol social hour, followed by a regularly scheduled Swan Range Community Music Jam Session. So come on over and stick around for some good fun and music!

Nearly two-thirds of our work is supported by individual donations from people just like you, so please hit the DONATE NOW button today or send a check to 3165 Foothil Road, Kalispell, MT  59901!

Thank you!

A celebration of Bruce May's life will be held Sunday, June 7, 2015 at the Whitefish Community Center, 121 Second Street, Whitefish, MT, from 3-6 pm!

Join Bruce's wife, Elaine Snyder, family and friends in this celebration and potluck dinner.

Bruce was a fisheries biologist with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and an avid volunteer, helping stop the proposed Kootenai Falls Dam and helping secure better protection for fish, wildlife and wildlands in Northwest Montana!

Bruce died April 23, 2015. Click here for his full obituary.

Come join us for a wilderness slide show and book signing by Frederick Swanson on Wednesday, May 13, 7-9 pm, at the Swan River Community Hall!

Learn about the hard-fought battles for Wilderness in Montana and Idaho - and be inspired to continue the charge!

Mr. Swanson will emphasize the long fight for the Swan Range's Jewel Basin and Bunker Creek, while talking about his new book "Where Roads Will Never Reach: Wilderness and Its Visionaries in the Northern Rockies."

Admission is free! The Swan River Community Hall is located across Highway 83 from the Swan River School and Echo Lake Cafe northeast of Bigfork.

Click here for a press release that provides more details and background.

Click here to listen to Mr. Swanson's 35-minute interview on this subject with Whitefish Community Radio - but still come to the slide show May 13 to see and hear much, much more!

Swan View Coalition's annual membership meeting will be held Sunday, November 16th, at 4pm!

It will be followed by a potluck dinner at 5pm and a regularly scheduled Swan Range Community Jam Session!

And there will be cake and a quick Swan Crest slide show to help celebrate Swan View's 30th Anniversary!

All will take place at the Mountain Brook Community Library, 2353 Foothill Road!

Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: Click here to watch the video of Stewart Brandborg's keynote address and click here for a transcript of his concluding "call to arms!"

UPDATE: In a related matter, click here for a PDF summary of Keith Hammer's 9/12/14 presentation to the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center's Wilderness 50 Conference.

Today we mark the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, but mark your calendars for September 20 and join us in a big celebration of it at the Flathead County Fairgrounds!

Come meet and be encouraged by Stewart Brandborg (above), who worked for eight years alongside Howard Zahniser to pass the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964!

This foresighted Act initially designated 9.1 million acres of public lands as Wilderness, including the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and in the hands of hard working citizens has since brought the total to nearly 110 million acres.

But many of America's wildest public lands remain at risk of development and the "expanding settlement and growing mechanization" foreseen by the Wilderness Act.

We look forward to Brandborg's words urging all of us to keep up the good fight!

Click here for our short biography of Stewart Brandborg.

Click here for the Missoulian's more detailed accounting of Brandborg's efforts to pass the Wilderness Act.

Click here or see below for the Flathead's Wilderness 50 Celebration agenda!

Attend a Forward for Climate rally this Sunday, February 17, at noon in Bigfork, Whitefish, Kalispell, or a city near you! We must MOVE FORWARD NOW!

The four-frame photo of the wolverine above was taken in July by Chad Harder, in the late-season Montana snowpack absolutely essential to wolverine raising their young.

Fish and Wildlife Service predicts these already limited habitats will decline by 63% in this century due to climate warming - threatening the wolverine with extinction in the lower 48 states!

But it's not just wildlife that is at risk, a few degrees of climate warming threatens the very existence of human civilization as well!

If you need convincing, take a few minutes to watch this video on "climate warming made simple" by David Roberts.

We cannot afford to dig up the Alberta tar sands and Montana's coal, selling it to China or elsewhere so it can be spewed into an already warming atmosphere that we all share!

The time for a change in our energy sources and consumption is NOW, before it is too late!

Please act this Sunday to move us Forward for Climate.

For more info visit Forward for Climate: 3 Flathead Valley Rallies, or visit 350.org to learn about the main Washington DC rally or search for a same-day rally in your neighborhood!

Sign a letter to President Obama here, urging him to take firm action on climate change!

Kalispell location: Depot Park at the corner of Center Street and Main Whitefish location: Corner of 2nd Street and Spokane Avenue Bigfork location: Harvest Foods roadside along Hwy 35.

Swan View Coalition's annual membership meeting will be held from 4 - 5 pm on November 11, just prior to the regularly scheduled Swan Range Community Potluck and Music Jam Session.

We'll quickly summarize the past year's challenges and accomplishments, elect officers of our working committee, then socialize over potluck dinner. Folks are welcome to stay and listen to music or join in making it!

The meeting, potluck and jam session will be held at the Mountain Brook Community Library, 2353 Foothill Road.

Send us photos of your Swan Ranger patch engaged in mindful adventure anywhere in the world. 

We'll add it to the slideshow in celebration of Swan Rangers enjoying and learning about the diversity of fish, wildlife and culture around the world - and the importance of their conservation!

If you don't yet have a Swan Ranger embroidered patch, simply email your mailing address to keith@swanview.org.

No "photoshop tricks" allowed - you really gotta go there and take a patch along!

Email your photos and their location to keith@swanview.org