CAL TASSINARI SCHOLARSHIP

College scholarship honors conservationist

The Flathead Valley Community College Foundation has established a scholarship in the name of the late conservationist Cal Tassinari.

A gift of $10,000 from the Flathead Land Trust allowed the college foundation to create the Cal Tassinari Endowed Scholarship Fund.

It honors Tassinari’s passion for the outdoors, education and conservation.

Throughout his life, Tassinari walked the walk as while talking the talk about conservation.
During the 1980s, he donated a conservation easement of 10 acres fronting the Swan River in Condon to the Flathead Land Trust. It established a permanent legacy of preserved wetland and upland forests as well the wildlife living on the land.

Upon his death at age 74 in 2004, Tassinari created another milestone by willing the land to Flathead Land Trust for further land conservation.

In accordance with Tassinari’s wishes, the trust sold his land to a neighbor with the conservation easement intact. Some of the money was used to create the endowed scholarship.

“Cal Tassinari continues to be missed, but the dual legacy he left the citizens of the Flathead is a permanent gift of immense value to us all,” said Lindsay Biedel, Flathead Land Trust Development Director.

Tassinari worked for the Forest Service beginning in the 1950s on the Nez Perce National Forest in Grangeville, Idaho. He later worked in Condon for Flathead National Forest as the first wilderness ranger in the Northern Region.

He surveyed and built trails in the Mission Mountains and Swan Range and wrote the management plan for the Mission Mountain Wilderness before retiring in 1983.

Tassinari was one of the first experts to receive the mantle of “Mr. Avalanche” in this area.
Tassinari began avalanche monitoring on Big Mountain in the mid-1970s. He also created and taught avalanche courses at Flathead Valley Community College.

To honor his legacy, the Flathead Land Trust established the scholarship to benefit community college students studying natural resource management, forestry, biology, wildlife biology, environmental science or a related field.

The college foundation will used earnings from the endowed fund to award scholarships each year, beginning in 2006-07.

Recipients must live in Montana and have finished one year of studies at the college or another accredited institution of higher education with a grade-point average of 3.0 or above.

For an application or more information, call the college financial aid office at 756-3849.
Additional contributions to the scholarship fund are welcomed. Those who would like to donate should call the foundation at 756-3963.

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