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Richard Sloan

Fresno, California
Outings Chair
Tehipite Chapter

Fresno native Richard Sloan has been drawn to the San Joaquin River for as long as he can remember. "As a child I'd ride my bike there after school, through fig orchards that have long since become suburbia. When I was in 6th grade we built a tree house by the river. It was on someone else's land, but it didn't seem to bother anybody."

Fast-forward to 2006. Sloan is attending a ceremony celebrating the deeding of 230 riverfront acres to the San Joaquin River Conservancy for a hiking trail and wildlife corridor. It's the same land on which he built his childhood tree house. On meeting the man deeding the land, Jim Moan, he mentions the tree house. "I always wondered who built that—my children had a great time playing in it!" Moen exclaims.

In 2003 Sloan started RiverTree, a charitable organization dedicated to cleaning up the San Joaquin. Under his direction, over the past six years Sierra Club members, RiverTree volunteers, and others have removed 5,800 tires, ten large dumpster loads of trash—seven in 2005 alone—and countless invasive weeds from the river. "Full restoration is still a distant goal," Sloan says, "but this is a good start."

Sloan says his environmental awareness was spurred while attending junior high school in Khartoum, Sudan, where he witnessed problems with water pollution and degraded wildlife habitat. Following a 27-year military career, he went to work for the San Joaquin River Parkway Trust, around which time he became active in the Sierra Club. He is currently helping restart the chapter's Inner City Outings program, and he regularly takes kids hiking or canoeing and kayaking on the San Joaquin.

Published: February 5, 2007