|
|
Sierra Club members have added three new faces to the
national Board of Directors, and a new wrinkle to the Club's
position on logging on national forests.
In the 1996 balloting, activists Anne Ehrlich, Lois Snedden
and Susan Holmes won seats on the 15-member board, while
incumbents J. Robert Cox and Roy Hengerson were re-elected
to their second and third three-year terms respectively.
Ehrlich is the associate director at Stanford University's
Center for Conservation Biology, Snedden an editorial
assistant from Reno, Nev., and Holmes the environmental
program director at Columbia University in New York City.
Cox, the top vote-getter, has stepped down after two years
as the Club's president. (At press time, the Board had not
yet voted for its new president.)
More controversial was a ballot initiative to put the Sierra
Club on record as advocating an end to commercial logging on
all federally owned public lands in the United States. The
measure passed by a nearly 2-1 margin, winning 39,000 of the
59,000 votes cast. Significantly, it failed to carry in
four Western states - Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming --
where many forest activists feared it could exacerbate
tensions between conservationists and timber- dependent
communities.
Given the ongoing devastation of public forests resulting
from last year's "logging without laws" rider, however, a
majority of those voting called on the Club to take a more
sweeping stand. Previously, the Club was on record as
favoring an end to clearcutting, type-
conversion (replacing diverse native forests with unnatural
single species plantings) and logging of old-growth or
roadless areas on federal, state and private lands. Non-
commercial cutting for firewood, fuel reduction and
ecosystem restoration would still be permitted under the new
Club position.
Carl Pope, the Club's executive director, called the
measure's passage "a strong statement by our members that
multiple use has failed - not because it was a flawed
concept in principle, but because the federal government
lacked the integrity to carry it out." He said the new
posture would provide the Club with a "visionary objective"
toward which the Club would advance in stages, by continuing
to work for individual wilderness bills, repeal of the
"logging without laws" rider and other incremental measures.
The Club will also work to reduce wood and wood product
consumption so that there is less demand, and legitimate
needs can be met from private commercial forests. If and
when federal legislation is introduced to ban commercial
logging on public lands the Club will support the
legislation and use the bill to educate the public and the
Congress about the abuses of commercial logging on our
public lands.
Up to Top
|
