Yesterday's gathering at the Teton County Fair building was a love fest–as it should have been.

The occasion: celebration of the first anniversary of 1% for the Tetons and the awarding of $100,806 in grants to 10 separate projects focused on the long-term sustainability of the Tetons.

Jonathan Schechter and Sean Love, founders of 1% for the Tetons, top my list of folks who deserve credit for coming up with idea to tweak Yvon Chouinard's 1% for the Planet model and apply it on a local level. Then, of course, there are the 53 (and counting) local business members who contributed the funds to make this year's grants possible.

Finally there are the grant recipients, who have come up with a slate of tremendous projects:

1. American Alpine Club — Will construct information  signs and provide free waste bags to reduce human waste in the Teton's alpine and sub-alpine regions.
2. Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival — Will teach English to Latino residents through environmental education … and conduct a 24-hour survey of the Jackson Hole area to inventory as many of the native flora, fauna and fungi as possible (two separate grants).
3. Snake River Fund — Will buy three power washers for boat launch sites to allow boaters to prophylactically spray off invasive aquatic nuisance species.
4. Teton County Library — Will install photovoltaic panels on the roof of the library and incorporate the learnings into many of the library's teaching programs.
5. Teton Valley Community Recycling — Will assess the solid waste stream in Teton County, Idaho to allow for the design of environmentally-sound solid waste disposal programs.
6. Teton Valley Trails & Pathways — Will map existing and proposed trail corridors within Teton Valley, Idaho, plus Alta, Grand Targhee, Felt and Ashton.
7. Van Vleck House — Will buy and install a greenhouse for their facility.
8. Western Wyoming Resource Conservation and Development — Will conduct a one-year pilot project to test the feasibility of a community-wide food composting program for restaurants and grocers.
9. Wyoming Game & Fish — Will identify, with interpretive signs and fence-crossing markers, the Teton County, Wyoming portion of the pronghorn migration corridor to Sublette County.

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