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Despite the rash of bleak announcements from the White House, the Club had
plenty to cheer about in 2003—especially the Senate rejection of the
Bush energy bill.
by Brian Vanneman and Tom Valtin.
Let’s be honest: 2003 was a tough year for environmental headlines. "Clean
Air Act Weakened." "Mercury Limits Rescinded." Wherever you
looked, Bush administration appointees were busy dismantling the laws that
protect our
air and water, our public lands, and the health of our communities. Some
days you wanted to skip the front page and go directly to the cartoons.
But on November 21, environmentalists celebrated a huge victory when the
Bush Energy Bill—a smorgasbord of subsidies and gifts to the oil and coal industries—was
defeated in the Senate. Fox News called the vote Bush’s biggest defeat
since taking office.
That may have been the biggest victory of 2003 and one of the few at the
federal level, but the Club’s 65 chapters and 300-plus groups fought
and won countless other victories in the past year. Here are just a few examples:
Grizzly Habitat Saved
 Grizzly
bears of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem secured a permanent home when
the holder of grazing rights in a 75,000-acre area adjacent to Grand Teton
National
Park waived his claim to the land. The Blackrock/Spread Creek retirement,
just 20 miles from Yellowstone National Park, ensures that a huge block of
habitat
will be protected, not only for grizzlies but also for the resident wolf
pack, black bears, and mountain lions. Conflicts between bears and cattle
in the area
led to 108 documented incidents where grizzlies killed or injured cattle
on this grazing allotment between 1992-1998. These conflicts resulted in
bear relocations,
bear removals, and the illegal killing of grizzlies. The National Wildlife
Federation, working with the Sierra Club, other conservation groups, and
state and federal
agencies, raised money to persuade the existing permit holder to waive his
grazing rights, allowing the Forest Service to retire the grazing allotment.
To help
protect grizzlies and their habitat further, please contact grizzly@sierraclub.org.
"Do it the Right Way, No New Highway!"
Through an outpouring of public support on National Trails Day in June, the
Club’s
Alaska Chapter successfully made its case against a highway reconstruction project
that would have included a bridge spanning a wilderness canyon just above Juneau
Creek Falls in the Chugach National Forest. Eighty-five people made the 10-mile
 round-trip hike to the falls, where they held placards to represent the proposed
path of the highway. A Fish and Game biologist and Chugach Forest Service district
ranger joined protesters to warn that moving the highway could drastically impact
the Kenai River Brown Bear population, for whom the area is an important feeding
ground. In November, after months of deliberation and continued public opposition
to the Juneau Falls plan, the Department of Transportation removed the so-called "Wilderness
Variant" from its list of alternatives for the project. "This is a
huge victory," said Club Alaska organizer Betsy Goll. "It was at
one time the preferred alternative but the DOT was forced to reanalyze the
project."
Oink if You Love Family Farms
Sometimes a five-foot furry pig costume can help you make your point. That,
and it’s hot inside. Both insights came to Minnesota eighth-grader Emily Barnes
when she played the part outside the Wedge Co-op in Minneapolis.  Emily and her
fellow Sierra Club activists worked diligently to educate consumers about the
risks of eating meat raised on routine antibiotics. They urged consumers to ask
their grocer for meats raised by traditional family farmers—who treat animals
humanely and don’t abuse important medicines. Activists were assisted by
the Antibiotics and Agriculture Campaign, a part of the Sierra Club’s Clean
Water effort. Because of the work of Emily and other stellar North Star Chapter
members, the Byerly’s and Lunds grocery store chains began carrying
antibiotic-free meats, and ran a series of billboard ads around the city
publicizing their
willingness to provide consumers with a choice.
Three Decades of Activism Pay Off—Ballona Wetlands Saved
When filmmaker Howard Hughes died in 1976, a prime parcel of Hughes-owned
Los Angeles coastal real estate—more than a thousand undeveloped acres known
as the Ballona Wetlands—was targeted for development. Twenty-seven years,
half a dozen lawsuits, ten Angeles Chapter resolutions, countless town hall meetings,
protests, rallies, giant puppets, posters, op-eds, and one gubernatorial recall
later, the state stepped in on October 1 to finalize the acquisition of more
than 600 acres —the last large wetlands remaining in Los Angeles County—for
permanent protection. The Sierra Club Ballona Wetlands Task Force was at
the forefront of the fight, which turned into a movement that has changed
the nature
of land use struggles in Southern California.
San Francisco Bay Saved from Airport Runways
In July, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) withdrew its plans to
fill as much as 1,000 acres of San Francisco Bay for new runways. "I couldn’t
be happier," says volunteer leader Jane Seleznow, who for four years has
been leading the Sierra Club Bay Protection Campaign efforts. "Four years
ago, when [San Francisco] Mayor Willie Brown announced his plans to fill in and
pave 1.5 square miles of the Bay, the conventional wisdom was that new runways
were a done deal." But opposition from groups such as the Sierra Club,
along with leaner economic times, have caused SFO to reconsider. Thousands
of S.F.
Bay and Loma Prieta Chapter members wrote or called their county supervisors
expressing opposition to the bayfill plans, and according to Loma Prieta
Chapter leader Richard Zimmerman, their efforts made a dramatic difference.
Kentucky Activists Hold Tyson Accountable
A Kentucky federal court ruled in November that factory farms operated by
food giant Tyson expose local communities to dangerous pollutants, and that
Tyson
must take responsibility for its record. The Sierra Club and local residents
sued Tyson for failing to report hazardous releases of ammonia from four
animal factories under its supervision. These huge operations pack tens of
thousands
of chickens into closed buildings and release ammonia and other toxic gases
that can cause sometimes fatal respiratory problems. "This decision is a huge
victory for Kentuckians," says Aloma Dew, organizer for the Sierra Club.
Tyson had argued that it was not responsible for pollution from its factory farms
because the operations are run by outside contractors. Federal Court Judge Joseph
McKinley was unconvinced by the company’s arguments. Tyson, he said, is, "clearly
in a position of responsibility and power with respect to each facility...and
has the capacity to prevent and abate the alleged environmental damage."
Students Protest, Boise Agrees: No More Endangered Forests in our Paper
The Sierra Student Coalition (SSC), the student arm of the Sierra Club, applauded
Boise Cascade for its promise to eliminate the purchase of wood products
from endangered forests. Boise Cascade became the first major U.S. forest
products
company to adopt a comprehensive environmental statement and the first distributor
of wood and paper products to extend an environmental policy to its suppliers.
Boise’s decision came in the wake of sustained pressure from the SSC and
other environmental consumers. SSC members postcarded at local distribution centers
and kicked Boise Cascade off their campuses. "Thousands of students across
the country who organized on their college campuses to protect our endangered
forests can pat themselves on the back," says SSC National Director Meighan
Davis. "The forest products industry has relied on logging these pristine
endangered forests for far too long. Boise’s decision shows that there
is a better way."
Okefenokee Gains Permanent Protection
In August, DuPont announced the largest gift of conservation lands in Georgia
history. Under an agreement with the Conservation Fund, International Paper,
and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 16,000 acres of land on Trail Ridge,
adjacent to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, will receive permanent
protection not only from the titanium mining that DuPont had proposed, but
also from all
mining, oil and gas extraction, and development. This resolves permanently
any threat that mining will take place east of the swamp and north of Suwanee
Canal
Road. Sierra Club activists in Georgia, Florida, and Delaware have been active
in this fight for the last eight years. (Watch for feature story coming in
March 2004 Planet.)
Forested Watershed Saved from the Saw
The Wenoca Group and residents of western North Carolina won a quick and decisive
battle to prevent the logging of a lush municipal watershed located at the head
of the Reems Creek Valley. Earlier this year, a local landowner found logging
company employees on his property surveying an extraction route. Word spread
quickly: the board members of the Woodfin water district had settled on a plan
to sell timber rights and use the money to replace old water lines, but the board
had not investigated any alternatives to logging and did not seem interested
in exploring any. Residents of Reems Creek and Woodfin started asking tough questions
about the logging plans, and a University of North Carolina environmental scientist
argued that clearing a forest to provide better water was a misguided approach.
The Wenoca Group helped put several candidates on the ballot for election to
the water board, three of whom won election. One of them, Robin Cape, became
the first write-in winner in at least 25 years.
Keeping the Country Country
In September, the Hawai’i Chapter won a major court victory in its campaign
to stop urban sprawl on Oahu, when a circuit court judge ruled that an environmental
impact statement must be completed before hundreds acres of agricultural land
could be turned into a residential development. "This is a tremendous victory
towards keeping the country country," said Chapter Director Jeff Mikulina. "We
only have one chance at ensuring smart growth on the remaining farmlands in central
Oahu. Once they are developed, they are gone forever." Developers Castle & Cooke
argued that the appropriate time to prepare an environmental impact statement
was after they received approval to build, but the court disagreed.
Rhode Island Port Dead in the Water
When Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri (R) took office earlier this year,
one of his first actions was to kill the controversial Quonset Point project,
a massive
deep-water container port proposed for Narragansett Bay. For nearly a decade,
Carcieri’s predecessor had championed the port project, which would have
accommodated a new generation of mega-ships too big for the ports of New York
or Boston to handle. "As they saw it," says Caroline Karp, an environmental
studies professor at Brown University and former Rhode Island Chapter, "Narragansett
Bay would be the best place to site such a facility." But the chapter kicked
into high gear, organized statewide opposition to the project and staged an event—widely
covered by the media—demonstrating just how huge these ships would be.
From that point on the Sierra Club became the group the media came to for the
opposition point of view. "This was an archetypal environmental struggle," says
Karp. "Had the Club not helped flush this out of the closet from the
beginning, the outcome might have been very different."
Farmland Preserved, Sprawl Halted
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s the approach
that the Huron Valley Group took in Michigan in their ongoing battle against
suburban sprawl. They were part of the losing coalition in 1998 when a land preservation
proposal was defeated soundly at the polls. But they made some headway in ’99
and 2000, and never gave up. This year, they forged a coalition with business
leaders, farming interests, and environmental groups to advance a ballot measure
extending Ann Arbor’s Parkland Acquisition program for 30 years and
using two-thirds of the money to acquire development rights on farmland outside
the
city. This time, they won handily, garnering two-thirds of the vote. According
to the Trust for Public Land, this marks the first and only time sprawl developers
have been defeated after funding an opposition campaign.
Wide Swath of Wisconsin Woods Saved
While building an activist network focused on forest conservation in Wisconsin’s
northwoods, the John Muir Chapter has been successful in protecting nearly 13,000
acres of high quality forest habitat for rare wildlife such as Canada lynx, American
marten, and Northern goshawk. U.S. Forest Service plans for timber sales on the
heavily logged Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest called for thousands of acres
of clearcutting, thinning, and other logging in some of best remaining unprotected
habitat on public land in Wisconsin. Working with a coalition of conservation
organizations, the chapter’s forestry committee is working to ensure
that logging is done in a manner that protects the outstanding trout fisheries,
wildlife
habitat and recreational qualities.
The list goes on. To explore the work of the Sierra Club, visit sierraclub.org,
click on any state, and see how your fellow Sierrans are striving to keep the
air clean and the rivers running for future generations.
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