Wapiti Slayer
New member
His word was his Bond
Key player in landmark project passes on
by Paul Queneau
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YT Timber owner Ron Yanke, died recently from leukemia.
The man at the heart of the Watershed project—the largest land acquisition in Elk Foundation history —recently died from leukemia.
Ron Yanke, 68, was a shrewd businessman as well as a philanthropist, and his dealings with the Elk Foundation involved a little of both.
In 1999, the foundation approached him about selling 32,000 acres of forestlands his logging company owned above Anaconda, Montana. Yanke was interested in seeing the land transfer to public hands, and he understood the value the Anaconda community placed on the property. But he also wanted to harvest about 30 million board feet of timber off the land to keep his mills operating until the purchase was complete.
Alan Christensen, Elk Foundation’s vice president of lands at the time of the purchase, worked extensively with Yanke to make the project happen.
“When I first met Ron, he generally wore Levis and a flannel shirt. He looked like a real, small-town local,” Christensen says. “He was very modest, and just easy to get to know.”
Beneath that unassuming exterior was a man of considerable means.
Besides YT Timber, Yanke also owned a variety of other businesses, including two Montana sawmills, a charter air service and a firefighting equipment company, among others. He is probably best known for being one of the original investors in Micron Technology, now the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer and Idaho’s biggest private-sector employer.
But Yanke’s interests went beyond business. He sat on the board of the Peregrine Fund (a nonprofit dedicated to restoring wild peregrine falcon populations) and was an avid supporter of Boise State University athletics. Yanke grew up in Boise, Idaho, working at his father’s machine shop, which he took over in 1973 after his father’s death.
“He was a really humble guy, and he was just dead honest,” Christensen says. “If he committed to something, you shook hands on it, and it would happen.”
It was just this sort of integrity that helped see the Watershed project through.
Perhaps most importantly Yanke gave the Elk Foundation the flexibility to raise the money to pay the $20 million price tag over four years.
“An appraisal is only good for a year, so he could have come back and said, ‘Well, we’re going to reappraise it,’ and then we would have had to pay more for it,” Christensen says. “But instead we locked in on a price built in the first appraisal.” The extra time also gave the foundation a chance to tap into mining mitigation funds to pay for a substantial portion of land.
After agreeing to sell to the foundation, Yanke also lived up to his commitment to log with wildlife values in mind.
“To cut 30 million (board) feet off of that ground and do it in a manner that everybody could live with took a lot of commitment from Ron, and he had a great forester working up there,” Christensen says.
In the summer of 2003, the Anaconda community and those involved in the Watershed project came together to celebrate the success of the project. Yanke spoke at the event, and it was the last time many people from the foundation saw him.
“(Watershed) was and still is the biggest land project the foundation ever did, and one which really worked in the favor of the organization,” Christensen says. “Ron is the guy who made it happen. That’s just as simple as you can make it.”
I worked for Ron for 8 years at Yanke Machine shop and he was a good man, RIP!
Key player in landmark project passes on
by Paul Queneau
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YT Timber owner Ron Yanke, died recently from leukemia.
The man at the heart of the Watershed project—the largest land acquisition in Elk Foundation history —recently died from leukemia.
Ron Yanke, 68, was a shrewd businessman as well as a philanthropist, and his dealings with the Elk Foundation involved a little of both.
In 1999, the foundation approached him about selling 32,000 acres of forestlands his logging company owned above Anaconda, Montana. Yanke was interested in seeing the land transfer to public hands, and he understood the value the Anaconda community placed on the property. But he also wanted to harvest about 30 million board feet of timber off the land to keep his mills operating until the purchase was complete.
Alan Christensen, Elk Foundation’s vice president of lands at the time of the purchase, worked extensively with Yanke to make the project happen.
“When I first met Ron, he generally wore Levis and a flannel shirt. He looked like a real, small-town local,” Christensen says. “He was very modest, and just easy to get to know.”
Beneath that unassuming exterior was a man of considerable means.
Besides YT Timber, Yanke also owned a variety of other businesses, including two Montana sawmills, a charter air service and a firefighting equipment company, among others. He is probably best known for being one of the original investors in Micron Technology, now the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer and Idaho’s biggest private-sector employer.
But Yanke’s interests went beyond business. He sat on the board of the Peregrine Fund (a nonprofit dedicated to restoring wild peregrine falcon populations) and was an avid supporter of Boise State University athletics. Yanke grew up in Boise, Idaho, working at his father’s machine shop, which he took over in 1973 after his father’s death.
“He was a really humble guy, and he was just dead honest,” Christensen says. “If he committed to something, you shook hands on it, and it would happen.”
It was just this sort of integrity that helped see the Watershed project through.
Perhaps most importantly Yanke gave the Elk Foundation the flexibility to raise the money to pay the $20 million price tag over four years.
“An appraisal is only good for a year, so he could have come back and said, ‘Well, we’re going to reappraise it,’ and then we would have had to pay more for it,” Christensen says. “But instead we locked in on a price built in the first appraisal.” The extra time also gave the foundation a chance to tap into mining mitigation funds to pay for a substantial portion of land.
After agreeing to sell to the foundation, Yanke also lived up to his commitment to log with wildlife values in mind.
“To cut 30 million (board) feet off of that ground and do it in a manner that everybody could live with took a lot of commitment from Ron, and he had a great forester working up there,” Christensen says.
In the summer of 2003, the Anaconda community and those involved in the Watershed project came together to celebrate the success of the project. Yanke spoke at the event, and it was the last time many people from the foundation saw him.
“(Watershed) was and still is the biggest land project the foundation ever did, and one which really worked in the favor of the organization,” Christensen says. “Ron is the guy who made it happen. That’s just as simple as you can make it.”
I worked for Ron for 8 years at Yanke Machine shop and he was a good man, RIP!
