Sea Turtle Festival Again a Smash Hit in Puerto Rico

The 5th Annual Festival del Tinglar (Sea Turtle Festival) took place in Luquillo, Puerto Rico, the next-to-last weekend in April.

Celebrating the Leatherback turtle nesting season, the festival is put on by the Puerto Rico Sierra Club and the Coalition for the Northeast Ecological Corridor.

The Northeast Ecological Corridor, one of the Puerto Rico Sierra Club's top priorities, is one of the most important U.S. nesting grounds for the critically endangered Leatherback, the world's largest sea turtle.

"The festival was a big success," says Chapter Director Camilla Feibelman. "In the afternoon the police closed the entrances to town because it was so full."

More than 7,000 people came to the event throughout the day to learn about the turtle and the corridor and other environmental issues.

Below, P.R. Chapter Chair Angel Sosa, in green shirt, at the Sierra Club's booth.

Climate Rally Calls for Congress to Pass Climate Bill

Photo by David DeFranza, courtesy of Treehugger

Tens of thousands of people converged on Washington, D.C., on April 25 for a Climate Rally and concert on the National Mall, organized by the Earth Day Network.

Sierra Club Deputy Conservation Director Bruce Nilles, above, got the crowd revved up with a speech exhorting Congress to pass a climate bill in 2010. Nilles formerly directed the Club's Beyond Coal campaign.

The Club also set up a booth, below, to educate attendees about clean energy, energy efficiency, and a range of other climate-related issues.

"The event reminded me of the rallies of the 70s," says longtime Sierra Club volunteer Jim Dougherty. "The crowd was incredibly diverse, energized simply by being there among Washington's great green vistas, and all feeling like this might—just might—prove to be a pivot point in this noble campaign of ours."

Photo by David DeFranza, courtesy of Treehugger

Sting, John Legend, and Bob Weir were just three of the high-profile musical acts that joined environmental, political, civil-rights, and religious leaders in marking the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

A forecast of thunderstorms threatened to put a damper on the rally. But as if by design, the clouds parted as Weir—whose former band, the Grateful Dead, penned the song Here Comes Sunshine—took the stage, and the Mall was soon jam-packed and throbbing with energy.

Photo by David DeFranza, courtesy of Treehugger

Speakers included Avatar director James Cameron, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who led the crowd in chanting, "Go Green! Let me hear you scream!"

Read more here and here. And enter the Sierra Club's Earth Day Sweepstakes (grand prize: a trip for two to Hawaii) by making a green pledge by April 30.

Photos by Jim Dougherty unless otherwise noted.

100-Mile Horseback Ride to Protect Tribal Homelands

On April 18, Navajo grassroots leaders from Black Mesa saddled up for a 4-day horseback ride from Piñon, Arizona, to the Navajo Nation capital in Window Rock to protest coal mining on Black Mesa.

The purpose of the ride was to send a message to the Navajo Nation Council that the voice of all tribal members and the future of Black Mesa should be considered in the royalty negotiations now underway with Peabody Coal.

Community members worked with the Black Mesa Water Coalition, To' Nizhoni Ani (Navajo for "Beautiful Water Speaks"), and Dine Care to organize the 100-mile ride and deliver the message to save Black Mesa.

Michigan Clean Water Activist Wins 2010 Goldman Prize

Lynn Henning, a family farmer and self-described "redneck" from Clayton, Michigan, is a 2010 recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

Henning, 52, boarded an airplane for only the second time in her life this week to travel to San Francisco, where she received her award on April 19 along with five other winners. The Goldman Prize is awarded to grassroots environmental heroes in the world's six inhabited continental regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, South America, and North America.

After a dozen huge factory farms, or CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), began operating within 10 miles of Henning and her husband Dean's 300-acre corn and soybean farm, she and her neighbors formed Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan to fight back and urge state and federal agencies to clamp down on CAFO pollution.

Club, Black Caucus Team Up to Take Kids Camping

In early April, eleven students from the Clark County Black Caucus in Las Vegas joined Sierra Club organizers Rob Disney and Vinny Spotleson and four adult chaperones on a 3-day camping trip to Valley of Fire State Park and visits to the nearby Reid Gardner coal plant and Moapa Paiute Reservation.

The trip's objectives were threefold: to get the kids out into nature, to talk about where Las Vegas' energy comes from, and to connect the Black Caucus with the Moapa Band of Paiutes, who showed the group their planned site for a solar plant as a cleaner alternative to Reid Gardner.

Planting a Tree for John Muir

On the final day of Scotland Week in North America, the Scottish Government and the Sierra Club held a special tree-planting ceremony in San Francisco's Presidio National Park to celebrate the life and legacy of Scottish-born Sierra Club founder John Muir.

Two Scottish dignitaries joined Sierra Club Deputy Executive Director Bruce Hamilton, John Muir National Historic Site General Superintendent Martha Lee, and kids from the Sierra Club's Inner City Outings program and the Presidio YMCA to plant a sapling in the Edgar and Peggy Wayburn Redwood Grove.

That's Michael Russell (center), Scotland's Cabinet Secretary for Education, and John Hutchison (right), chairman of the John Muir Trust, pictured above with Hamilton at the April 9 ceremony.

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