Wilderness Medicine Outfitters
Support Class
As Carl Weil watched development move closer to his property and change the nature of the surrounding landscape, he decided to permanently protect his 130-acres in Elizabeth, Colorado with a conservation easement. Carl strongly believes that people are stewards of the land and should leave it in better condition than how they found it, and this is the ethic that is infused into the dozens of environmental-based educational courses offered through his business, Wilderness Medicine Outfitters (WMO).
A third generation guide and a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine, Carl started teaching wilderness medicine in 1967, purchased his property in 1970 and started running programs out of it two years later. As the oldest business in the outdoor education industry specializing in wilderness medicine and camp skills, WMO’s private and group classes attract students from all over the globe. The programs are based out of a small solar energy facility in the center of the property, a facility that has been operating off the power grid for over 24 years now. The teaching opportunities on the property are endless, with models of low-impact and conservation-minded living on every acre.
But a local, homegrown business is not the only attribute of this conserved property. The land acts as a buffer to the growing urban landscape of the surrounding area and also provides wildlife habitat for mammals and birds such as antelope, deer, coyote, owls and hawks. His children grew up with raw open land in all directions but now he worries that only conservation easement properties may offer a glimmer of this freedom. When Carl looks out of his office window, he sees more than acres of rolling hills and Ponderosa Pine forests; he sees something that he can pass onto the next generation in better shape than he found it. And that is something that he treasures.