Richard Lance Christie, known to his friends as "Lance", has spent much of his adult life working quietly, skillfully, and with astonishing proficiency, to protect the wildlands and living environment of the American Southwest.

Lance joined the Sierra Club in 1973 and was a founding member of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He was one of the incorporators of the Earth First! Foundation, and served three terms as the Secretary of the Earth First! Board of Directors. He also served three terms as Secretary of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Board during six years' Board service.

Lance was one of the incorporators of the environmental nonprofit, Association for the Tree of Life in 1988, has served on its Board of Trustees to the current time, is currently President. ATL pursues ecological preservation and restoration projects, and was one of the original member organizations of the Utah Wilderness Coalition. It is currently leading a project to develop a comprehensive ecological preservation plan for the entire Colorado Plateau region.

Lance's academic training was in social psychology. He did psychoacoustical research for the U.S. Air Force, then psychopharmacological research at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute while doing doctoral work at UCLA.

After graduate school he served as Planner Director with the New Mexico Health and Environment Department for nine years, then administered a $14 million annual budget as state alcoholism program director.

Since 1985 Christie has done environmental and civic volunteer work from half to full time. He is a coauthor of Wilderness At the Edge, the Utah Wilderness Coalition's first published BLM wilderness proposal, the basis for H.R. 1500 "America's Redrock Wilderness Act." That original proposal has since been revised and greatly enlarged, but the 400-page document that presented the initial vision for wildlands preservation on BLM lands throughout Utah, continues to serve as a conceptual blueprint.

In addition to his public service as an environmental advocate, Lance has extensive experience in local government. He served for 9 years on the Grand County Planning and Zoning Commission, on both the Grand County and Moab City Board of Adjustment, has directed several environmental and land use task forces for local and regional government in Southeast Utah, is currently Grand County Regional Water Planning Administrator, and represents the Colorado Plateau physiograpic province in the Spine of the Continent Collaboration's continental ecological restoration initiative.

Lance has lived in or near Moab, Utah, for over 30 years. His commitment to the preservation of Utah's world-renowed natural wonders has been unflagging throughout three decades, and he has time and again shown himself to be a skilled diplomat and savvy negotiator in the labyrinthine world of local politics.

Those who delve deeper into Lance's Renewable Deal proposal, will soon recognize that it is the product of an exceptionally fertile, powerful, agile, lucid and articulate mind. He is an archetypal Rennaissance man, but with an overlay of classically American can-do optimism and ingenuity. He is as knowledgeable and skilled in home construction, home repair, electronics, plumbing and auto repair, as he is in thinking and writing prolifically on an astonishingly wide range of subjects. He is a polymath, a sage, one of the very few people for whom wrestling with problems of global scale is as natural as breathing.

In addition to all this, Lance is warm, kind, fun-loving teddy-bear of a guy, with a sparkling joie de vivre. He has recently been coping with great personal loss--the decline of his beloved wife LaRue, who was stricken with Alzheimer's disease several years ago--with impressive courage, energy, and grace.

There is no telling what this gifted, prolific man may accomplish during the next years and decades. What is certain is that his Renewable Deal is the masterwork of a lifetime and a major contribution to America and the world. With the help of many partners in the emergent Earth Restoration Community it will continue growing richer and deeper with each day, week, month and year.

--Ray Wheeler