The Sierra Club

ESTABLISHED: June 4, 1892
EMPLOYEES: 250 (1997)
MEMBERS: 650,000
PAC: Sierra Club Committee on Political Education (SCCOPE)

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 85 Second St., Second Fl. San Francisco, CA 94105-3441
PHONE: (415) 977-5500
FAX: (415) 977-5799
E-MAIL: information@sierraclub.org
URL: http://www.sierraclub.org
PRESIDENT: Chuck McGrady
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Carl Pope
CHAIRMAN: Michael McCloskey

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

The Sierra Club's stated mission is "to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth." Over the years, the Sierra Club's mission to "protect the wild places of the earth" has become the cornerstone of the organization's policy. Today, the Sierra Club is one of the best-known and most successful conservation organizations in the United States, dedicated to practicing and promoting the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources, as well as to educating and enlisting "humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment."

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

The Sierra Club is divided into 57 chapters, which are further subdivided into 370 groups. The Club also has 14 field offices and a lobbying office in Washington, D.C., staffed by 30 people. Chapters and groups work on regional as well as national conservation issues, publish newsletters, and sponsor local outings and activities. Chapter presidents form the Council of Club Leaders and assist the board of directors in establishing the club's national policy at an annual conference.

The board of directors, composed of 15 elected volunteers, is the governing body of the Sierra Club. The board has the responsibility and authority to oversee all staff and volunteer activities, to establish conservation priorities and internal policies, and to adopt and implement the annual budget. The board of directors elects the club's officers, including the president and executive committee. The board also annually elects an executive director, who handles day-to-day operations. Directors serve on at least one of the club's six governance committees, which focus on Communication and Education; Finance; Membership and Development; Organizational Effectiveness; Outdoor Activities; and, of course, the most important of all, Conservation. Decisions on policy, strategy, and tactics involve literally thousands of committees and more than 6,000 club members bear at least one official title.

The student arm of the Sierra Club was founded in 1991 as the Sierra Student Coalition (SSC). The coalition represents a network of thousands of young people across the United States. The aim of the SSC is to "help students become the most effective, responsible activists they can be by tailoring and amending the resources of the Sierra Club to fit their needs." The SSC is considered a Sierra Club chapter and is given an equal vote in the club's decision-making processes.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

The days when the Sierra Club's primary function was to help its members "explore and enjoy" the United States's wilderness have long passed. Today's politically sophisticated Sierra Club devotes far more time, energy, and money to preserving and protecting the environment than to exploring the remote backwoods of the Sierra Nevada. In fact, a Sierra Club outing in the 1990s was as likely to be a trip to clean up an oil spill as a backpacking trip through the Rocky Mountains. Yet even while its staff and management are as professional as any in Washington, grassroots activism remains one of its most effective tools of political leverage as evidenced by the Environmental Bill of Rights presented to Congress in 1995 which boasted more than one million signatures.

Much of the Sierra Club's power derives from the fact that it is generally perceived as one of the more mainstream of the environmental groups and that its members tend to vote twice as regularly as the average citizen. Members are kept informed of current issues by the club's magazine, Sierra, as well as by action alerts and other notices from both national and local offices. The club carefully tracks the voting records of members of the House Representatives and Senators and follows the money trails left behind by anti-environmental lobbying groups. Letter-writing campaigns are encouraged and, of course, members can use the detailed information provided them to determine their local candidate's stance on environmental issues and vote accordingly.

Newspaper advertising is also a frequently used tactic, and the club's extensive publishing wing, Sierra Club Books, not only helps promote environmental positions to the general public, but also contributes a modest surplus to the club's general fund. The club produces numerous books, calendars, and promotional materials annually. Through licensing agreements, other companies produce Sierra Club postcards, jigsaw puzzles, posters, address books, and audio and video cassettes—all of which serve to keep the organization a perpetual presence in the public eye.

In addition to its efforts to promote or oppose environmentally related legislation, the club also operates the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (established in 1971), which it uses to bring lawsuits against companies or governments engaged in anti-environment activities. In 1984 the club successfully brought a lawsuit against the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), compelling it to regulate the release of radioactive pollutants.

PROGRAMS

Exploring and enjoying the earth's wilderness has always been at the heart of the Sierra Club's philosophy. Even today, as environmental protection becomes an increasingly important component of the organization's mission, the club remains dedicated to providing its members with wilderness adventures around the world. Each year, the club's Worldwide Outings Program sponsors about 300 trips to 20 countries. The club offers every conceivable type of outdoor adventure—from river-running and white-water rafting to bicycle and ski tours. Members can even build trails, preserve archeological sites, and help clean up the environment on the club's service trips. Individual chapters also sponsor hundreds of outings on a regional basis.

On the environmental protection front, the Critical Ecoregions Program features multifaceted plans tailored to the particular needs of 21 different major land and water ecosystems in the United States and Canada. Each of these plans offers concrete proposals for local action to restore and protect the ecological health of the region.

Recognizing that the largest single source of greenhouse gases is the internal combustion engine, the Sierra Club has also instituted the Miles-Per-Gallon Campaign and the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Campaign. Arguing that making cars go further on a gallon of gas is "the biggest single step we can take to reduce oil imports, protect wilderness areas from oil drilling, decrease air pollution, and curb global warming," the club calls for accelerated efforts to improve fuel efficiency and stricter enforcement of the 1990 and 1997 Clean Air Act Amendments.

BUDGET INFORMATION

In 1996, the Sierra Club reported total revenues of $52,760,300. Almost $16 million of this came from member dues, with another $16 million in the form of grants and contributions. The remainder was drawn from book sales and other retail sales, royalties, advertising, and investment and other income. Of the $52 million, the club spent some $34 million on program services—with more than half of that going towards "studying and influencing public policy." Support services—including administrative, membership services, and fund-raising activities—accounted for close to $18 million.

HISTORY

As the Industrial Revolution steamrollered across the vast tracts of wilderness that made up so much of the United States in the nineteenth century, there was little thought about what the United States would be like once all its wild places had been tamed. Even so, as the century drew to a close, there were men and women determined to stop the ravaging of the country's remaining wilderness.

At the urging of one of the most renowned of these conservationists, John Muir, the Sierra Club was incorporated on May 28, 1892, "to explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them," and "to enlist the support and cooperation of the people and government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada." To this day, recreation, education, and conservation have continued to define the club's mission. Over time, however, the focus of Sierra Club has expanded to include the entire planet, rather than just the mountains of the U.S. Pacific Coast.

National Park Expansion

Since many of the Sierra Club's original 182 charter members were scientists, the organization conducted numerous scientific explorations of the Sierras in the 1890s. The Sierra Club Bulletin (first published in 1893 and continuing today as Sierra) included reports of excursions, guides to Sierran geography, scientific papers on the range's natural history, and regular columns on forestry. In its first conservation effort, the Sierra Club led a campaign to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park and later provided the ground work for the establishment of Mt. Rainier National Park in 1899. The club also sponsored public educational and scientific meetings, and in 1898 established an information center for visitors to Yosemite Valley—the first of many lodges, information centers, and trailside shelters that the club would build and staff.

Seeking to boost the club's political influence, John Muir supported tourism on the grounds that "if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish." In 1901 the club's board of directors decided to add an annual summer outing in an effort to encourage members and other interested people to see firsthand the country the club sought to preserve.

In spite of its success in attracting members and prompting the establishment of several national and state parks, the club's early years had ups and downs. The Sierra Forest Reserve, once thought inviolable, was opened to logging and sheep grazing, and in 1914 the club conducted its last outing to Hetch Hetchy Valley, north of Yosemite, before it was flooded by a reservoir. That same year, automobiles first entered Yosemite Valley, inaugurating the modern era of mass tourism, and planting the seed for future conflicts within the club.

At first, transportation seemed a boon for the Sierra Club, as it made it easier for members to visit faraway mountains. By the 1930s, however, the club began to worry that its large groups and their activities could ultimately result in "loving the mountains to death."

Wilderness Conference

During this period, the club's environmentalist stance also became more pronounced. In 1949 Club Director and professional wilderness packer Norman "Ike" Livermore Jr. organized a wilderness conference attended by about 100 federal and state land managers, outing leaders, and professional outfitters and guides. The High Sierra Wilderness Conference was the first of 14 biennial conferences that greatly influenced subsequent conservation policy. In the same year, on the basis of testimony by the Sierra Club, the secretaries of the Interior and Army rejected a proposal for construction of a dam that would have flooded 20,000 acres of Glacier National Park.

The booming economy that followed the end of World War II (1939–45) saw a period of rapid development. To counter increasing recreational and commercial demands on natural lands, the Sierra Club devoted more of its time to protecting the wilderness than to exploring it. In 1951 the Club's statement of purpose was revised from "explore, enjoy and render accessible . . ." to "explore, enjoy and preserve . . ."

In 1950 the Sierra Club established its first chapter outside of California, the Atlantic Chapter, which comprised 18 eastern states and the District of Columbia. The following year, the club tested its strength by challenging a federal government proposal to build two dams in the Dinosaur National Monument. The battle continued for the next four years until 1956, when federal water developers abandoned plans to dam Dinosaur National Monument. Meanwhile, club membership had soared to 10,000.

By 1963 the Sierra Club had become the nation's leading conservationist group and opened an office in Washington, D.C., to support its increasing lobbying efforts. In 1964 Sierra Club lobbying helped push through the Wilderness Act, the first wilderness protection legislation in the world, and in 1966, the organization's outspoken opposition to proposed dams in parts of the Grand Canyon prompted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to take away the club's tax-deductible status. Nevertheless, the club's campaign to stop the damming of the Grand Canyon succeeded.

Electoral Politics

By the end of the 1960s the Sierra Club was a well-established political force in the United States. Its tactics and strategy served as a model for the dozens of environmental groups that arose in the environmentally conscious 1970s. Throughout the decade, the Sierra Club steadily widened the scope of its interests, establishing an International Program in 1971, and in 1973 launching a campaign to defend the Clean Air Act against opposition from the automobile industry. By 1980 the Sierra Club had decided to follow in the steps of other special-interest groups and take the plunge into electoral politics. While not actually endorsing any national candidate by name, it raised and dispensed about $100,000 to support candidates in key races. The experiment was less than successful, however, as a Reagan-led landslide wiped out many of the environmentalists in Congress whom the Club had supported.

Spurred by what it saw as a Reagan administration drive to dismantle or weaken environmental laws passed in the previous two decades, the Club endorsed some 140 candidates for the House and Senate in the 1982 election and donated approximately a quarter of a million dollars to support their campaigns. More than 75 percent of club-endorsed candidates won and the club remained active in electoral politics throughout the decade. In 1992 it raised __BODY__ million to support favored candidates.

By 1990 the Sierra Club was a formidable political force, boasting more than half a million members. The club's new-found political activism resulted in some definitive victories. In 1987 Congress passed reauthorization and expansion of the Clean Water Act over a veto by President Ronald Reagan and, in 1990, a strengthened Clean Air Bill passed the House and Senate despite threat of veto by President George Bush. In 1995 the Club delivered over a million signatures on the Environmental Bill of Rights in opposition to the "War on the Environment" waged by Congress. Most recently, in 1997, the Sierra Club and its environmentalist allies helped pushed through strict new clean air standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency against a massive campaign waged by business and conservative groups.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

From its early days as an organization of conservationists, the Sierra Club has expanded its interests to cover virtually everything that impacts the environment—from a dam in California to the reduction of greenhouse emissions worldwide.

The club's concern about global warming has led it to demand more stringent controls on automobile emissions and other pollutants. It wants federal and state laws and regulations strengthened to limit pollutant emissions from internal-combustion engines to "the absolutely practicable minimum." Moreover, if emissions of a pollutant cannot be reduced to acceptable limits through existing technology, the club wants regulations to be imposed that can set limits through other means.

Other issues of concern to the Sierra Club include biotechnology, mining, nuclear power, ecotourism, and energy conservation. Among its priorities, the Sierra Club is determined to halt the destruction of forest ecosystems. Besides opposing all logging activities that it considers environmentally unsustainable, the club wants an immediate halt to all logging in remaining old-growth or roadless areas, and to ecologically destructive clearcutting.

Case Study: Salvage Rider

During the 1990s many environmental groups—including the Sierra Club—grew increasingly concerned about the government allowing the logging industry to harvest trees from national parks. While destruction of old-growth forests in British Columbia, Canada, had been a focal point for the growing antilogging movement, the Sierra Club soon found plenty to be concerned about closer to home. The 1994 Republican takeover of Congress brought issues to the forefront that had been festering for years, as the new Congress launched an immediate assault on both existing and proposed environmental legislation.

In 1995 Senators Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) and Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg.) pushed through an amendment called the "Salvage Rider" to the Federal Recissions Act (H.R. 1159; Public Law 104-19), which was an omnibus federal budget-cutting measure. The Salvage Rider was an emergency two-year salvage timber sale program, and included among other provisions that salvage could only take place on areas recommended by the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. Signed into law on July 27th, 1995, the rider would, according to detractors like the Sierra Club, accelerate logging of much of the remaining old-growth forests in the United States, increase the amount of clearcut logging, and jeopardize vital habitat for endangered species. Proponents of the rider dismissed these arguments, claiming that the rider was simply an emergency measure designed to allow "salvage" logging of dead and dying trees. When a pro-environment legislator moved to eliminate the rider, his amendment failed by a 150 to 275 vote.

Environmentalists dubbed the proposed amendment the "Logging Without Laws" rider, and it soon became a leading cause of concern to conservation groups, many of which were asking for a "zero cut" policy that would not allow any logging in national forests. The Sierra Club threw its support behind the Zero Cut Campaign in the spring of 1996. Up until that time, members and chapters of the club had been prohibited from using the club's name in support of Zero Cut: most of the club's board and national leaders had been opposed to Zero Cut because it might have a negative economic impacts on rural communities, particularly in the western states. Ultimately, advocates convinced the leadership that by shifting dollars from timber subsidies into ecological restoration, both jobs and over-logged federal forests could be saved.

In spite of its efforts to emphasize the mainstream aspects of the Zero Cut policy, the Sierra Club's new stance drew howls of rage from clearcutting proponents who denounced the club for abandoning its mainstream approach and joining more radical groups. The club countered that there was nothing radical about a policy designed to prevent "the massive clearcuts, eroded hillsides, and streams filled with silt and logging debris that are the legacy of commercial logging of our public heritage." Pointing out that the logging program on national forests operated at a net loss to taxpayers of $7.3 billion between 1980 and 1991, and that national polls showed a majority of Americans were opposed to resource extraction from public lands, the club's Executive Director, Carl Pope, claimed that, in fact, the Zero Cut policy was mainstream, and that it was the clearcutters who were the radicals.

Despite repeated attempts by Sierra Club supported legislators to push through repeals of the rider, Republican control of Congress ensured that it remained in force through 1997. Nevertheless, the Club could claim a victory of sorts since its decision to support the Zero Cut policy had gained it new allies among the many environmental groups who had dismissed its previous conservative initiatives.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Sierra Club priorities into the twenty-first century will address environmental conservation issues such as wildlands protection and global warming. Specifically, the Campaign to End Commercial Logging on Federal Lands will emphasize public education and grassroots organizing and will continue to lobby against logging legislative attacks. The Stopping Sprawl Campaign will continue to develop strategies to help stop population sprawl at the state, regional, national, and international levels. The campaign will target initiatives that focus on land-use planning and transportation.

As the environmental wars continue, the club's mainstream approach may cause internal divisions. The controversial zero cut agenda, which the club supported following a vote by members, caused a serious split within the group. This internal split echoed what was happening in the environmental movement as a whole. As Patrick Moore, one of the original founders of Greenpeace, explained in a 1994 speech, the environmental movement in the 1990s split into two factions: those who advocated a pragmatic approach of working with business and government to promote the idea of "sustainable development," and those with more extreme positions who were in favor of taking a "zero tolerance" and "anti-development" stance at any cost. The Sierra Club has always been, and still considers itself to be, a part of the "sustainable development" camp, but its support for zero tolerance of public logging caused many to fear that it was abandoning its usual willingness to compromise.

GROUP RESOURCES

Besides an extensive Web site at http://www.sierraclub.org and numerous individual chapter Web sites, the Sierra Club provides a variety of information resources including newsletters reporting on environmental news and club events and a highly successful book publishing division with more than 700 titles in print. For more information, contact the Sierra Club Information Center at 85 2nd St., Second Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 or phone (415) 977-5653.

You can also send E-mail to information@sierraclub.org or visit the club's Web site at http://www.sierraclub.org.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

Sierra Club publications include Sierra, a full-color magazine sent to members six times per year, which features environmental analysis, outdoor adventure, and tips on food, home, health, and travel. Nonmembers can subscribe for $15 a year (1999). Reprints of selected articles are available from Sierra Club Public Affairs. Call (415) 977-5653 for more information. The club also publishes The Planet, a newsletter that provides information to help activists fight for environmental protection at the local, state, and national level. It is available at a yearly subscription rate of $8 for members and $11 for nonmembers. For more information, contact the Sierra Club Information Center at 85 Second St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 or phone (415) 977-5653. You can also send E-mail to information@sierraclub.org or visit the club's Web site at http://www.sierraclub.org.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bass, Rick. "The Reality of Salvage Logging Seen From Stump Level." Sierra July/August 1996.

Berger, John J. Understanding Forests. San Francisco, Calif.: Sierra Club Books, 1998.

Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. "Beating The System: This Year More Than Ever, Candidates Get Help from Special-Interest Groups That S-T-R-E-T-C-H The Rules." Time 21 October 1996.

Drexel, Karl. "Will the Real Sierra Club Please Stand Up?" Christian Science Monitor 24 May 1996.

Fox, Stephen. The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.

Hornblower, Margot. "We Can Sit Here Bemoaning Beavis and Butt-Head or We Can Learn from Their Appeal." Time 9 June 1997.

Shaffer, Denny. "Why the Sierra Club Went Political." Christian Science Monitor 28 October 1982.

Turner, Tom. Sierra Club: 100 Years of Protecting Nature. New York: Henry Abrams, Inc., 1991.

Wilkinson, Todd. "New Sapling Amid Old-Growth Leaders: Internet-savvy Sierra Club President Heralds Next Generation in Environmental Leadership." Christian Science Monitor 9 September 1996.