A tax-exempt nonprofit organization utilizing music to promote
environmental awareness and protection of our wilderness heritage.

muse@musemusic.org

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Musicians United to Sustain the Environment (M. U. S. E.) is a rapidly growing non-profit environmental organization with two primary goals. First, we raise funds for effective grassroots environmental projects through CD sales, concerts, and public donations. Secondly, as we ply our musical craft, we heighten environmental awareness -- a vital step to help ensure the sustainable stewardship of our ecosystems

We are particularly interested in efforts to protect endangered or threatened species and preserve existing wilderness habitats. Also, our emphasis is on environmental education for our young -- the soon-to-be stewards of our natural heritage.

MUSE has 501(c)(3) status, so your grants, donations, and endowments are tax-deductible. Contact us about the tax benefits of donating appreciated stocks.

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MUSE donates continuously to pragmatic grass-roots environmental efforts where our funding will yield tangible and meaningful results. Donations to MUSE and profits from our cd's are put to work on specific projects that we feel are important to the environmental integrity of our planet.
Groups that have already received MUSE funding include:

• Hells Canyon Preservation Council is working to protect one our natural treasures here in America. Their eventual goal is the designation of a 2 million acre national preserve encompassing the Hells Canyon-Wallow Ecosystem in northeast Oregon and west-central Idaho.
  
• Friends of the Clearwater  watch over our last roadless lands in West-Central Idaho. They are an amazing group, doing lots of forest protection with very little funding.
• Northwoods Wilderness Recovery is stopping degradation of forests in Michigan and Wisconsin's North Woods. Wild & Scenic Rivers contain critical habitat and migration corridors and are supposed to be protected from development pressures. Unfortunately, logging and development in these fragile areas is being allowed to continue on our National Forests. NWR is trying to correct this problem with the help of a grant from M.U.S.E.
• Swan View Coalition recieved a grant from M.U.S.E. to help fund their efforts to report on, and put the brakes on, the current hysteria to log our national forests in order to "save them". The fires of 2000 are being used as an excuse to log. Swan View's work is important in debunking current myths and misconceptions about our forests.
• Center for Environmental Equity is a small but very effective organization in Oregon working hard to change the damaging mining laws of 1872. MUSE helped with a project to stop cyanide heap-leach mines next to sensitive wilderness areas.
• Friends of the Bitterroot is an active organization in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. M.U.S.E helped fund their ongoing attempts to document the presence of grizzly bears in the Selway/Bitterroot Wilderness. With this documentation it will help extend protection of the bears when future grizzly bear reintroduction takes place.
• Northwest Ecosystem Alliance is another hard-hitting grassroots group focused on forest preservation and endangered species protection in northwest Washington and southeast British Columbia. Our project helped build bridges between the environmental community and the local churches in trying to improve salmon recovery and watershed protection.
• Native Forest Network is a worldwide web of grassroots activists striving to protect the last remaining native forests. MUSE helped fund their campaign focusing on imperiled wildlands in the Northern Rocky Mountains.
• Wild Things Unlimited is a research organization focusing on endangered forest carnivores in the fragile Yellowstone Ecosystem. Their important field work (which MUSE supports) will help protect sensitive species such as martin, fisher, lynx, and wolverine.
• Montana Wilderness Association is Montana's oldest wilderness organization working hard to save our last best places. The MUSE grant focused on promoting unspoiled back country of the Gallatin Range.
• Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project is about as grassroots as you can get. They do amazing things with very little funding. Our grant helped them in their work to watchdog forestry practices on our eastern Oregon national forests.
• Predator Conservation Alliance works to save a place for America's predators. MUSE helped fund their campaign to preserve prairie dog and grassland ecosystems in the Great Plains, important habitat to the vanishing black-footed ferret, swift fox, and many other species.
• American Wildlands strives for protection of our wild places and wild things. They're very focused on corridors (including the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative) and our grant helped with a booklet to publicize the need to protect existing wildlife corridors.
• RESTORE: The North Woods has a campaign for an important Maine Woods National Park and Preserve. This would preserve and restore miles of ecologically rich forest land in northern Maine. M.U.S.E. helped fund their Pedal for the Park, and effort to publicize the project throughout New England
• Big Sky Wildcare is a bird of prey rehab center. We helped fund their educational program to teach humans how to understand and better live with our wild, feathered neighbors.
• Northern Alaska Environmental Center is working to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. M.U.S.E. knows that this is one of the most unique places on this Earth and we support keeping it as it is. Our grant will help keep ANWR wild.
• Natural Resources Council of Maine  is working to protect the wild character of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. Our M.U.S.E. grant is helping the Council in their work to assure that the Allagash will be managed in a responsible manner, and that the wild river will be cherished and kept as pristine as possible.
• Oregon Natural Desert Association is trying to save a small but ecologically important area called the Badlands east of Bend, OR.   The proposed 38,000-acre Badlands Wilderness is home to ancient dry river canyons, volcanic ridges of Pahoehoe lava, red-ochred pictographs, and 1,000-year old juniper trees. The Badlands offers critical winter habitat for deer and elk, and hosts a surviving remnant native grassland that was once typical of Oregon's High Desert.
• Conservation Leader's Network  is building coalitions to help create marine reserves along the Oregon coast.

If you are an environmental group with 501(c)(3) status and seek MUSE funding, write us about your work and ask about our grant proposal process.

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What You Can Do

You can help MUSE in a variety of ways:

Order our cd's: Give them as gifts for holidays and birthdays. Tell your friends about us. If you're involved in other organizations, encourage them to contact us about using MUSE products in their fundraising efforts.

Make a Donation today: You can make tax-deductible donations to MUSE knowing that the dollars we get go to cutting-edge environmental work. We can provide a gift card for your donations in honor of your friends and family. Instead of giving more "stuff", try giving environmental progress via a contribution to MUSE.

Organize a MUSE Concert : Help bring one of our MUSE musicians to your area for a benefit concert. Contact us, let us know where you live, and we'll send out an appeal to all of our musicians to take part.

Talent Wanted : If you are a musician performing environmental music and would like to be a part of MUSE, please contact us. We plan an ongoing series of benefit cds.

Contact us at: muse@musemusic.org or through one of these two addresses:
M.U.S.E., PO Box 671 South Lyon, MI 48178
or
M.U.S.E. c/o Jim Stoltz PO Box 160477 Big Sky, MT 59716

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