LEAVENWORTH — In a "passing the baton" ceremony on Jan. 21, the Wenatchee River Institute (WRI) will celebrate a change of leadership from outgoing Executive Director Carolyn Griffin-Bugert, who has retired, to incoming Executive Director Canuche Terranella. At the ceremony, board member Gro Buer will also be honored for contributions as a donor, volunteer and board member for eight years.
Terranella said about Buer, “She pushes us hard about how to serve the kids of the lower valley. She’s weeding the garden. What a spectacular leader that is.”
He said Griffin-Bugert, who has also administered programs serving low-income and minority students in the Wenatchee School District as grants coordinator, has “created a great fly wheel of youth education programs up and down the valley that I’m excited to continue.”
Terranella, 46, grew up in Austin, TX and moved to Seattle in 2000. He ran a construction company in Seattle from 2008-2015. Then he moved to Costa Rica for a few years and started a hotel that his family still runs. They returned to the northwest in 2018 to raise their kids in Leavenworth, he said.
He became involved with WRI as a parent when his son went to an outdoor rock climbing and geology camp. He served on the board as a person with financial expertise for three years before resigning to be a candidate for the executive director position.
In a public search, WRI found candidates and after several interviews the search process ended with a presentation to the board.
“I had a great deal of advantage being on the board,” said Terranella, “I understand the organization’s needs and what the financial position is, and how critical donors are. Also, the advantage of not moving” since he lives locally.
“Wenatchee River Institute has three main spokes, if you will, to our program delivery,” said Terranella. First, there is youth delivery on campus or by a traveling naturalist who goes to bring science curriculum to schools. Second, there is community education, which are science and nature-based lectures and talks at the Red Barn facility. Third, the community programs are workshops like bear tracking that are “always of nature, but that’s in our mission and we can interpret it in many ways,” said Terranella.
Contiguous to Leavenworth’s waterfront trails, and within walking distance of Front Street, the 9-acre Barn Beach Reserve property at 347 Division St. in Leavenworth has seven gardens.
Philanthropist Harriet Bullitt offered the property to the National Audubon Society in 2001 and it was renamed Wenatchee River Institute in 2011. The Red Barn Building was built in 2008 as a lab and meeting space with flexible configurations.
The administrative offices are housed in the River Haus historical building, which was a manager’s house from the time of the Leavenworth Lumber Mill. Inside is a collection of taxidermy birds.
Nine employees work from these offices for WRI which has an annual budget of about $750,000. Eight current board members serve, and Terranella said WRI is “always looking for new people who are excited about nature education, about community events and community projects.”
One recent achievement is an endowment raise in 2021 and 2022, which raised over a million dollars that is held for the WRI by the Community Foundation of North Central Washington and will be used for the benefit of the WRI in perpetuity. Terranella said "we can't access the money itself, but annually we will earn the interest off of it. If people are excited about seeing WRI last for generations, the pathway is through an endowment that supports the operations. The interest check can be used in any way — it could be maintenance, it could be preservation of grounds, it could be education programming." The funds for the endowment were raised by individual donors and a match from the Icicle Fund. "That is praise-worthy,” said Terranella.
To begin as the executive director the week before Thanksgiving, Terranella said, “I’ve had to keep my team close and well-supported, and then in the next few weeks my work will be to work outward in concentric rings with critical supporters and volunteers.”
Before that he served on the board of directors as Treasurer from Fall 2018 through July of 2022, then took a few months to interview and be selected for the Executive Director position.
Of the Wednesday night Red Barn events, which are also wired for remote streaming access, Terranella said it is “a real treasure to have something so stimulating come to a town like ours, and every week to have something intriguing — some very local issues that people have strong opinions about.”
The most recent free Red Barn event was with local and professional skier Ingrid Backstrom speaking about the film “The Approach 2.”
Next at the Red Barn, at 7 p.m. on Jan. 18, the Mill Dam Rehabilitation and Recreation Improvement Project will have a hybrid in-person and online Zoom event to share the project idea with the community at large and gather feedback that will help guide the direction of project development.
Then the next Wednesday’s Red Barn event at 7 p.m. on Jan. 25 is called Grizzly Grub: Bear Habitat in the North Cascades by speaker Bill Gaines who is a wildlife ecologist and director of the Washington Conservation Science Institute.
“It’s a welcoming place,” said Terranella, “I want people to come use the facilities and enjoy our art.” A brand new outdoor classroom has space for 14 picnic tables with a “beautiful view place to sit and be quiet and have a picnic, whatever you want to do on the gardens and lawns,” he said. The property is open to the public all the time, and also is now available to rent, privately.
The long-term dream goal is “that Wenatchee River Institute is a place that is meaningful to everyone who lives in the four-county region” of Chelan, Douglas, Grant and Okanogan counties, said Terrenella, “and it is a shared treasure that people know about and have pleasurable memories from being a part of. It’s a place they belong.”
