Bronze Star Recipient Stacy Bare New Mission Outdoors Director

Photo by Chris Kassar

On July 16, former U.S. Army Captain and Bronze Star recipient Stacy Bare was named director of the Sierra Club's Mission Outdoors program. Formerly a representative for the Club's Military Families & Veterans Initiative, Bare served in Bosnia and Iraq and spent time as a civilian explosive ordnance disposal technician in Angola and the Republic of Georgia.

That's Bare in the blue parka atop 14,411-foor Mt. Rainier—highest peak in the Cascade Range—the week before he officially took the reins of Mission Outdoors. From left to right: Luis Benitez, Bare, Nick Watson, and Chad Butrick. (Watson and Butrick are fellow veterans.) Last fall, Bare helped train eight veterans in mountaineering and accompanied them on a September 11 ascent of the Grand Teton in Wyoming to commemorate 9/11.

After receiving the Bronze Star for meritorious service in Baghdad during the Iraq War, Bare returned to the States and completed his Masters in City Planning and Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

It was during this time that he first began to struggle with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To combat the affliction, he turned to rock-climbing and the outdoors, which he credits with allowing him to rebuild his life.

"Life experience has left me believing in the healing power of time spent in nature," he says. "Access to our nation's outdoors spaces and wild places—around the corner and across the country—ought not to be exclusive. I look forward to leading Mission Outdoors and ensuring that access to nature is available to anyone who wants and needs it."

Mission Outdoors is comprised of four Sierra Club programs: Building Bridges to the Outdoors; Inner City Outings; Local Outings; and the Military Families & Veterans Initiative. "Taken together, these programs embody the heritage and spirit of John Muir's vision to connect America to the great outdoors," Bare says.

Preserving a Special Piece of La Isla del Encanto

Photo by Luis Villanueve-Cubero

The Sierra Club's newest chapter won a huge victory—for the second time—the last week of June when Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño signed a law protecting nearly 2,000 acres of the island's Northeast Ecological Corridor from development.

For years, the Corridor—also known as the NEC—has been threatened by two proposed megaresorts that included 4,900 new residential and tourist units and three golf courses.

"We did hundreds of presentations to children about sea turtles and the Corridor; we collected thousands and thousands of petitions; we put on the Festival del Tinglar (sea turtle festival) for six years running; we did cleanups in anticipation of turtle nesting season, we led tours of the Corridor; and we involved thousands of people in our grassroots effort," says Puerto Rico Sierra Club organizer Camilla Feibelman, at left.

(Feibleman was the 2012 recipient of the Sierra Club's Special Achievement award, in large part for her leadership in protecting the Northeast Ecological Corridor. She was also instrumental in fighting a proposed pipeline and incinerator, and she spearheaded the effort to involve the Sierra Club in New York City's Puerto Rico Day parade, the largest parade in the U.S.)

Above, the 2011 Puerto Rico Day parade; below, the 2010 Festival del Tinglar.

Encompassing palm-fringed beaches, wetlands, forests, coral reefs, mangrove swamps, and a bioluminescent lagoon, the Northeast Ecological Corridor is one of the most important nesting grounds on earth for the endangered leatherback sea turtle, below—the largest of all sea turtles.

The NEC is home to more than 50 rare, endemic, and threatened species, including the Snowy Plover, Brown Pelican, Puerto Rican Boa, Hawksbill Sea Turtle, and West Indian Manatee. The El Yunque National Forest, adjacent to the Corridor, is the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. Forest Service jurisdiction.

Photo courtesy of Coalition for the Northeast Ecological Corridor

"This place is better than Avatar," Feibelman says.

Perseverance Pays Off in Fight to Save Old-Growth Redwoods From the Saw

Photo by Aarkwilde, coutesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Sierra Club and local environmentalists in Sonoma County, California, have won a David and Goliath battle to scale back logging of old-growth coast redwoods and Douglas fir in the Bohemian Grove, above, a 2,500-acre property owned by the elite San Francisco-based Bohemian Club.

A settlement reached by the Sierra Club, the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club (BRRC), and the Bohemian Club includes numerous changes to a previously-approved logging plan that the Sierra Club and BRRC successfully challenged in court, including protection of the finest stands and largest individual trees on the property.

"We are pleased that the Bohemian Club has made significant changes to its forest management plan which will result in improved long-term protection and restoration of the majestic Bohemian Grove and its coastal redwoods and Douglas fir," says Jay Halcomb, at left, chair of the Sierra Club's Redwood Chapter, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008.

The Bohemian Grove represents one of the most remarkable remnant stands of old-growth and late successional redwood and fir forest in Sonoma County. The Bohemian Club's own publication, Walking Bohemia's Home: Introduction to the Redwoods, states that the redwoods on the property "comprise one of the two finest stands of virgin timber in the lower Russian River area."

As a result of its relatively pristine character, the Grove has significant wildlife habitat for threatened and sensitive species, including the Northern Spotted Owl. Ironically, the Bohemian Club's mascot is the owl.

The stage for the mediated settlement was set when the Sierra Club and the BRRC prevailed in Sierra Club v. CAL-FIRE in Sonoma County Superior Court last year.

The Bohemian Club, an ultra-exclusive men's club comprised of 2,500 of America's richest and most powerful individuals, had logged more than 11 million board feet of timber in the Bohemian Grove between 1984 and 2005, including old-growth redwoods.

Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), which grow only in a narrow band that extends fewer than 500 miles from Monterey County, California, to extreme southwestern Oregon, are the tallest trees on earth; coast Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), which grow from central California to central British Columbia, are second.

The fight to scale back logging in the Bohemian Grove, located 75 miles north of San Francisco, was initiated by lifetime Sierra Club member and then-Bohemian Club member John Hooper, at right.

Hooper, who with his wife Molly runs a retreat center and organic farm in Mendocino County, Ca., was invited to join the Bohemian Club in 1999. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and uncle were all members, and his grandfather used to take him to the Grove when he was a boy, instilling in him an awe of the towering redwoods.

Once he joined the club, Hooper began exploring the outlying acres of the Grove, using the club's trail map and a 1942 aerial photo that showed nine far-flung stands of old-growth redwoods on the property. In 2001, he hiked to the largest of them, Bull Barn, which the club's own literature describes as containing "the finest hillside stand of old-growth redwood in the Grove." But deep within the 54-acre stand he was startled to find several dozen of the most magnificent trees tagged for cutting.

Don't Frack the Hoback

More than 350 people turned out recently in Jackson, Wyoming, for the "Don't Frack the Hoback" Wild & Scenic Film Festival.

The Sierra Club took the lead in organizing the event and recruiting other conservation partners to join in and raise awareness about a proposed natural gas field in the middle of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, just 35 miles from Grand Teton National Park.

The area targeted for drilling is the Upper Hoback Basin, below, part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—the largest intact temperate ecosystem in the northern hemisphere. But if Texas-based Plains Exploration and Production Company (PXP) has its way, the basin will be subjected to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The project would involve 136 wells, 17 well pads, pipelines, waste treatment plants, and 30 miles of industrial roads.

Photo by Dan Heilig, courtesy of the Wyoming Outdoor Council

The "Don't Frack the Hoback" Wild & Scenic Film Festival featured an array of adventure- and conservation-oriented films and a powerful lineup of community leaders who spoke out against PXP's proposal. That's Republican state legislator Keith Gingrey, below at left, talking with a local outfitter.

The event garnered media coverage in the Jackson Hole Weekly, Teton Valley News, The Mountain Pulse, and on Jackson Hole Radio.

"It was a very inspiring evening, a great way to get our message out there," says Sierra Club organizer Zack Waterman. "I'm confident that when they get the call, many of the attendees will join us at public hearings that will take place in the Jackson area later this spring."

Big Vermont Rally to 'Put People and the Planet First'

Despite a hard morning rain and daylong threatening cloud cover, the Vermont Sierra Club and partner groups came together on May Day for the largest weekday rally ever in Montpelier, the state capital.

[Little known factoids: Montpelier is by far the smallest state capital in the nation, with about 7,700 residents, and is the only state capital with no McDonalds restaurant.]

An estimated 2,000 Vermonters marched through the streets of Montpelier to the statehouse in support of the right to healthcare, the right to form unions, the rights of migrant farm workers, and the Vermont Sierra Club's Our Forests Our Future campaign.

The Vermont Workers' Center, a key Sierra Club ally and a strong supporter of Our Forests Our Future, was the lead organizer of the May Day rally. More than 30 Vermont organizations mobilized for the event, billed as Put People and the Planet First.

"When environmentalists, labor, Native Americans, and others from the 99% are united in supporting our various struggles, only then do we begin to build the power necessary to Put People and the Planet First," says David Van Deusen, at left, Vermont-based organizer for the Sierra Club's Resilient Habitats campaign. "May Day in Vermont was an important step in building such a popular front. We are winning."

The Vermont Sierra Club marched together with members of the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, which has joined forces with the Club in advocating for the creation of new tribal and town forests that will link up and create a mosaic of wildlife corridors crossing the state—from the northern Connecticut River to the Nulhegan Basin and from the northern Green Mountains to the New York State border.

Vermont Sierra Club organizer and Abenaki tribal leader Luke Willard addressed the rally, outlining the goals of the Our Forests Our Future campaign and detailing the ongoing challenges facing the Abenaki people. That's Willard below, firing up the crowd.

[Click on the image above to watch a video of Willard's speech, or click here to read the transcript.]

Other speakers included U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and 350.org founder Bill McKibben.

"All told, today was a very powerful demonstration of cross-movement solidarity," says Van Deusen. "We talked with many, many people at the rally and gathered about 175 petition signatures supporting Our Forests Our Future."

Our Forests Our Future is the Vermont component of a larger Sierra Club goal to link the forests of Vermont's Green Mountains with New Hampshire's White Mountains and Maine's North Woods to the east, and New York State's Adirondack Mountains to the west—a regional effort of long-term forest preservation promoted by Resilient Habitats.

TAKE ACTION

If you are a Vermonter, sign the Vermont Sierra Club's petition in support of Abenaki Tribal Forests.

Then download an Abenaki Tribal Forest petition and have your friends, co-workers, families, and neighbors sign.

Learn more about Our Forests Our Future and Resilient Habitats' Adirondacks to Acadia vision.

Film and Forum Kick-Start Campaign to Protect Wild Bison in Montana

The Montana Sierra Club and partner groups recently hosted a public screening of the critically acclaimed documentary, Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison, at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.

The screening was followed by a discussion about the future of wild bison in Montana and a call to action to protect the iconic animals and their habitat. Above, attendees mingle and sign petitions; below, the packed auditorium.

"We had an outstanding event tonight, with more than 200 'bison-enthusiastic' folks in attendance," says Bozeman-based Sierra Club organizer Zack Waterman, below. "There were folks standing in the back of the auditorium and sitting in the aisles."

Among the decision-makers on bison issues who attended were Mary Erickson, Gallatin National Forest Supervisor; Pat Flowers, Region 3 Supervisor of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks; and staff from the office of U.S. Senator Jon Tester.

"After the screening Pat Flowers pulled me aside and thanked us for our efforts," Waterman says. "I let Governor Schweitzer know about the energy and enthusiasm we had at the event, and he told me that with the public support we demonstrated tonight, he thinks he can begin a public process with the federal and Montana EPA to consider the first year-round habitat in Montana for migrating Yellowstone bison, including the three key areas the Sierra Club has identified."

Senator Tester's office commented on the progress the Sierra Club and its partners are forging and asked to be informed of future bison-related events. A thank-you email from Testor's office was waiting in Waterman's Inbox the morning after the screening.

Vermont Sierra Club Turns Out to Support Conservation and Affordable Housing

The Vermont Sierra Club recently helped turn out more than 150 conservation and affordable housing advocates to a meeting at the state capital to support the Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund, which some members of the state legislature had proposed suspending for a year.

Governor Peter Shumlin and other elected officials spoke at the February 23 meeting, organized by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition with support from the Sierra Club and its partners in the Our Forests Our Future campaign. Sierra Club conservation organizer David Van Deusen, at left, is spearheading the campaign.

Below left, Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott addresses the statehouse gathering; below right, Governor Shumlin with Sierra Club student activists from St. Michael's College, who presented the governor with the latest issue of Sierra magazine, containing an article about how Shumlin and Vermonters are tackling climate change.

Affordable housing might seem to be outside the Sierra Club's scope, but the Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund provides resources for forest and farm conservation as well as for the construction of low-income housing.

Our Forests Our Future—part of the Sierra Club's larger Resilient Habitats campaign—is partnering with local communities and Vermont's two state-recognized Abenaki tribes to create a mosaic of new community and tribal forests that will help build wildlife migration corridors and make the state's woodlands more resilient in the face of climate change.

"If we are to make progress in conserving key wildlife corridors through the building of new community forests, we need some basic tools to do so," Van Deusen said in a press release the day of the statehouse event. "The Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund is one of those essential tools."

Club Mobilizes Public to Block Bryce Boondoggle

Photo by Niles Urry, courtesy of EnviroNews

The last Friday in January, the Sierra Club held a rally and press conference outside the Bureau of Land Management's office in Salt Lake City and hand-delivered sample copies of 210,126 email comments to the BLM state director's office. That's Club organizer Tim Wagner, below, delivering the comments.

The comments were in opposition to a proposal by Alton Coal Development to expand its operations by leasing and strip-mining more than 3,500 acres of federal land a mere 10 miles from Bryce Canyon National Park, below, which many consider to be among the U.S. Park Service's crown jewels.

Photo by Jean-Christophe Benoist

"The mine expansion would effectively turn this region—arguably the prettiest part of Utah—into an industrial zone," Wagner says. "Bryce Canyon is one of America's great beauty icons, and a strip mine right outside the park is not what Utahns or the rest of the nation wants to see."

Dan Mayhew, conservation chair for the Sierra Club's Utah Chapter, points to the heavy truck traffic the mine expansion would bring—more than 300 trucks a day when round-trips are factored in.

The Club's Resilient Habitats and Water Sentinels programs have trained local activists to test streams in the area to expose the coal industry's assertion that strip mining won't affect water quality.

"We want to see the U.S. move away from coal," Wagner says. "Allowing a 20-to-35-year strip mine to occur is a huge displacement of clean energy opportunities."

Maryland Sierra Club Turns Back Threat to Endangered Watershed

The Maryland Sierra Club won a huge victory this month in its battle to save an especially high-value estuary of the Potomac River when the Maryland Department of the Environment denied wetland-destroying permits for a proposed highway across the headwaters of Mattawoman Creek. Below, Mattawoman Creek wetlands.

"The denial of this highway is a major victory for smart growth, protection of Mattawoman Creek, the Potomac, and Chesapeake Bay," says Bonnie Bick, below, conservation chair for the Club's Southern Maryland Group. "This highway would have facilitated sprawl development along faltering Mattawoman Creek, a Sierra Club priority and American Rivers' 4th-most endangered river in the nation in 2009."

Broad Support for National Recreation Area in San Gabriels

Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, courtesy of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune

The last Saturday in October, more than 150 people packed a meeting in the Southern California city of El Monte to show their support for a proposal by the National Park Service to create a new National Recreation Area in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The Sierra Club is a founding member of San Gabriel Mountains Forever, a coalition of community, faith, social justice, and environmental groups working to protect the San Gabriels, one of Southern California's most scenic and valuable natural resources.

"Our vision to create a National Recreation Area for the San Gabriel Mountains and River is a step closer to becoming a reality," Sierra Club organizer Juana Torres said during a rally before the meeting at the Jack Crippen Senior Citizens Center in El Monte, which sits just south of the San Gabriels. That's Torres, at right below, after the rally.

This was the first of five public meetings the National Park Service is holding in Southern California to present the alternatives studied in its draft San Gabriel Watershed and Mountains Special Resource Study and solicit public feedback.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported that a majority of those in attendance at the El Monte meeting supported Alternative D, which would protect nearly 600,000 acres in the San Gabriel Mountains and its foothills and establish wild and scenic river designations for the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo Rivers and portions of the Puente Hills.