National Goals

BIG WILDS: PROTECT ONE HUNDRED MILLION

ACRES

On the eve of the new century, little remains of our nation's original

wildlands. More than 95 percent of America's old-growth forests has been

logged. Over 90 percent of our native prairies has been plowed under or

grazed away. Half of our wetlands has been drained, and 100,000 acres

more is lost each year.

To save what's left, the Sierra Club's Wildlands Campaign aims to protect

or increase current safeguards for 100 million acres, including imperiled

treasures such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Alaska's coastal

rainforest, the Maine Woods, the Everglades, the Northern Rockies, Utah's

redrock wilderness, and the giant sequoias of the southern Sierra Nevada.

Included in the campaign are dozens of smaller special places, locally

beloved landscapes such as Arizona's San Francisco Peaks, New

HampshireÕs White Mountains, North Dakota's National Grasslands, and

Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin.

Some of these wildlands are part of other initiatives that seek to connect

and preserve entire ecosystems. The Northern Rockies, for example, are

vital to Y2Y, a U.S./Canadian effort to preserve an 1,800-mile arc from

Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon Territory. They also figure in the

Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), which would link wild

areas in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming with wildlife

migration corridors for grizzlies and other far-ranging animals otherwise

trapped in dead ends of genetic isolation.

"We can look at what's left of our natural heritage and see a spiritual

element, rather than a frontier to be conquered," says Melanie Griffin,

coordinator of the Wildlands Campaign. "It connects us to our ancestors

and future generations."

How to Help

For more information about the Sierra Club's effort to secure lasting

protection for 100 million acres of America's vanishing wild heritage in the

next decade, contact wildlands coordinator Melanie Griffin at (202)

547-1141 or melanie. griffin@sierraclub.org, or visit

www.sierraclub.org/wilderness/ wildlands/.

NATIONAL FORESTS: END COMMERCIAL LOGGING

People often assume that federal ownership automatically saves wildlands

from being plundered. Sadly, that's not the case, as is shown by the scars

of clearcuts and logging roads on our 191 million acres of national forests.

"We're doing an incredible amount of damage to the last, best

fish-and-wildlife habitat in the country, and we receive so little for it," says

Sean Cosgrove, the Sierra Club's associate Washington representative.

"Only four percent of the wood and wood products that Americans use each

year comes from the national forest system."

The Club is lobbying for the passage of the National Forest Protection and

Restoration Act, coauthored by Representatives Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.)

and Jim Leach (R-Iowa). The measure would eliminate commercial logging

on federal public lands, promote restoration, and aid economically

stressed logging communities.

A logging ban is just the first step. "To recover species like salmon in the

Pacific Northwest or songbirds in the Southeast, itÕs not enough to protect

the last remaining scraps of intact habitat," Cosgrove says. "We need to

start restoring damaged habitat to bring back naturally functioning

ecosystems." Doing so would guarantee clean water for our cities, tourism

and recreation opportunities, and jobs for rural communities.

"We're changing the debate in America about how we manage our national

forests," says Cosgrove. "The question used to be, 'How much can we log?'

Now people are asking, 'Should we even log at all?'"

How to Help

The Sierra Club's End Commercial Logging Campaign is calling on the

Forest Service to end its taxpayer-subsidized timber-sale program. To

help, contact Sean Cosgrove at (202) 547-1141 or

sean.cosgrove@sierraclub.org, or visit www.sierraclub.org/forests/.

FREE-FLOWING RIVERS: BRING DOWN THE DAMNS

In Edward Abbey's eco-classic The Monkey Wrench Gang, a band of

nature-loving malcontents plots to restore the Colorado River by blowing

up Glen Canyon Dam. The Sierra Club has the same goal of rescuing

rivers across the country (minus the outlaw pyrotechnics).

Along with the Glen Canyon Institute, the Club wants to decommission

Glen Canyon Dam and drain the Lake Powell reservoir, eventually restoring

180 miles of river upstream. "Glen Canyon could provide prime breeding

habitat for endangered fish, as well as a connection between isolated

habitats along the Colorado River all the way down to Mexico," says Rob

Smith, director of the ClubÕs Southwest office. At present, so much water

is sucked from the Colorado that the river often fails to reach the Sea of

Cortez, dooming species like the endangered desert pupfish and the

Yuma clapper rail.

"Our use of the Colorado River is unsustainable," says Steve Glazer, chair

of the Club's Colorado River Task Force. "We've turned the river into a

plumbing system."

Many interests like it that way. "Lake Foul" provides water and electricity

for burgeoning western states, as well as fortunes for Jet Ski merchants

and party-barge owners. But an Environmental Defense Fund study has

shown that the regionÕs water and power needs could be met by Hoover

Dam and more energy conservation. "Dams are a political decision," Smith

says. "If people want to build one, we build one. If we want to stop using

one, we can do that too." Another prime candidate for retirement is

O'Shaughnessy Dam, built in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1923 over

the ardent opposition of John Muir and the young Sierra Club. "We want to

restore this beautiful valley," says Ron Good, chair of the Club's Hetch

Hetchy Task Force, which proposes re-engineering Don Pedro Reservoir

downstream to meet San Francisco's water needs.

The tide is turning against dams across the country. In 1997 Quaker Neck

Dam in North Carolina became the first large dam to be removed in the

United States solely for environmental reasons. Last year, Edwards Dam

on MaineÕs Kennebec River met the same fate, and the Club is

spearheading an effort to save salmon in the Pacific Northwest by

breaching the four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington.

Good is encouraged: "Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is going around the

country with a sledgehammer, giving speeches about preserving wild

rivers," he says.

How to Help

Want to help save salmon in the Pacific Northwest? Contact Jim Baker at

(509) 332-5173 or jim.baker@sierraclub.org. To join the Hetch Hetchy

Valley restoration effort, contact Ron Good at (209) 372-8785 or

rongood@inreach.com, or visit

www.sierraclub.org/chapters/ca/hetchhetchy/. To help restore the Colorado,

contact Steve Glazer at (970) 349-6646 or steve.glazer@sierraclub.org.

CLEAN AIR & WATER: PHASE OUT THE POISONS

The passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act, which clamped down on air

pollution, was a milestone victory for environmentalists. Since that time,

weÕve learned that even limited amounts of such poisons as PCBs

(banned in the United States in 1977), mercury, and dioxin are too much.

These substances have been linked to cancer and neurological,

reproductive, and developmental disorders. Once released into the

atmosphere (medical-waste incinerators are a leading source of mercury

and dioxin emissions) they disperse around the globe, where they persist

for decades. High concentrations of dioxins, for example, are found in

Greenland, northern Canada, and the Great Lakes region, where cool

temperatures prevent the poisons from vaporizing and moving on.

Persistent pollutants accumulate as they travel up the food chain, finally

settling in the fatty tissue of humansÑwhere they can be passed on to

fetuses and breastfeeding infants.

"These pollutants have an entire 'death cycle' as they move from

smokestacks to fish and wildlife to fish sticks to mother's milk," says Marti

Sinclair, vice chair of the Sierra Club's Environmental Quality Strategy

Team. The Club is working to establish a zero-discharge zone, starting

with Lake Superior, the least polluted of the Great Lakes.

Since pollution freely crosses borders, Club activists are also lobbying the

U.S. government to negotiate a strong global treaty that would phase out

persistent organic pollutants. Current federal policy merely advises Great

Lakes and subsistence anglers to eat less fish. "The industries that have

caused this pollution ought to pay for cleaning it up," says Emily Green,

director of the Club's Great Lakes Ecoregion Program. "People should be

able to eat the fish out of the nationÕs waters, which belong to everyone."

How to Help

To aid the Sierra Club in its global efforts to ban persistent

bioaccumulative poisons such as mercury, dioxin, and PCBs, contact Marti

Sinclair at (513) 674-1983 or mjsinclair@prodigy. net. To help clean up the

Great Lakes, contact Emily Green at (608) 257-4994 or

emily.green@sierraclub.org.

LIVABLE CITIES: HALTH URBAN SPRAWL BY AIDING

URBAN AREAS

Ultimately we can't protect wild places and wild creatures without improving

the places where people live. "Suburbs are growing outward because

people donÕt find the quality of life that they should in our urban centers,"

says Sierra Club Southern California representative Jim Blomquist. "We

need to attack sprawling development when it destroys open spaces, but

we also need to address the reasons why people want to leave the city."

The sickness of sprawl-pollution and traffic congestion, lost open space,

high taxes, and deserted downtowns-infects communities across America.

But nowhere does the Club's Challenge to Sprawl Campaign face a bigger

battle than in California, where the population is expected to increase

nearly 50 percent by 2020. Southern California alone will gain almost 7

million new residents.

"People look back on the seventies, when California had about twenty

million people and Orange County still had orange groves, as if it were

nirvana," Blomquist says. "I don't want to look back on the 1990s and say,

'Ah, those were the great years.'"

California Vision 2020 lays out an agenda to make the future better than

the past. "California subsidizes poorly planned growth in the outer suburbs

and discourages development in the inner cities and older suburbs," says

Blomquist. "These communities don't have sufficient funds to improve

their environment. We want to get urban California a fair share for

transportation, water quality, and parks." The Club's anti-sprawl campaign

calls for more local, state, and federal money to buy open space; stronger

land-use planning; funding for urban development; and better mass

transit.

"The success or failure of Los Angeles as a nice place to live affects

wildlands all over the West," Blomquist says. "Unless we want to see our

big urban areas become human centrifuges, flinging people out into every

rural and wild area, we need to make cities livable."

How to Help

Tired of traffic jams, smog, and the rapid destruction of open space? Then

join the Sierra Club's nationwide Challenge to Sprawl Campaign. For more

information--or a copy of the 1999 report "Solving Sprawl: The Sierra Club

Rates the States"--call (608) 257-4994 or visit www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/.

Jennifer Hattam is Sierra's assistant editor.

sierra.magazine@sierraclub.org for more information.

Top | Sierra Magazine | Join | Sierra Club Home

Sierra Club | 85 Second Street | San Francisco, CA 94105-3441

Telephone 415-977-5500 Fax 415-977-5799

For more information about Sierra: sierra.magazine@sierraclub.org

To report technical problems with this website: webmaster@sierraclub.org