Bold Stances to Confront Current Threats:

We need bold positions and campaigns to mobilize and vigorously confront new threats.

Increase funding, and fundraising, for protection of forests and all wildlands:

Over the years the Sierra Club has put less and less effort into raising funds for protecting wild places: forests; wetlands; deserts; and other important habitats. In addition, substantial sums are raised every year through membership donations, and programs like Wilderness Guardians, but very little of those funds are allocated to hiring staff, and supporting volunteers, to protect wild places. Chapter volunteers work hard to build a lawsuit against destructive resource extraction projects in forests and other wild places, but we lack staff attorneys who are funded to file lawsuits to protect the Nature. Our Strategic Framework makes clear that we must scale up wildlands protection efforts to overcome the climate crisis (wildlands are our best carbon sinks) and the extinction crisis. We are not upholding that promise. For example, years ago, the Sierra Club’s members voted overwhelmingly to advocate for an end to the logging program on federal public lands. While the Sierra Club initially began to make good on that promise, the later decisions to withdraw funding from forest and wildlands protection efforts took a major toll. While there is now interest in increasing support for wildlands protection, we need more Board members with experience in this area to make this happen.

Ensure due process for all Sierra Club volunteers and staff:

We need to have robust procedures to prevent harassment and discrimination. At the same time, due process must not be compromised or eliminated. A few years ago, some Sierra Club staff members created a document that they called the “Equal Opportunity Policy”. However, this document contains no due process provisions to protect volunteers or staff against unfair or baseless complaints against them by political rivals in the organization. Complaints can be made in secret, and severe actions taken against longtime volunteer leaders—including removal from all elected or appointed positions—without those leaders ever being informed about the accusations against them, or being given any meaningful opportunity to respond. This is wrong, and harmful to the functioning of the Sierra Club. What’s more, the Board of Directors never passed a resolution approving of this document, and its undemocratic provisions, which means it was never properly vetted or approved. Only the Board can create new Sierra Club policies.

Better communication with outings leaders, and fewer burdens placed on chapter-led outings: 

We encourage national Sierra Club to consult with a variety of chapter outings leaders, to listen, and to participate in chapter outings when possible. This has improved recently, thankfully, but there is still significant room for further improvement. Chapter-led outings are active and vibrant in many places, but national Sierra Club has at times, over the past several years, created undue burdens on chapter outings leaders and participants. Many people have stopped participating out of frustration with what they see as unnecessary interference. National Sierra Club needs to be mindful of these impacts.

Build connections between conservation and environmental justice:

Conservation and environmental justice are both essential aspects of the Sierra Club’s work and mission. An unhelpful narrative has developed in recent years, however, with some saying the Sierra Club should only focus on protecting wildlife and habitat, and others saying the Sierra Club should become a social justice organization that is not focused on wild places. This is a false dichotomy. Most of our key conservation fights have a clear environmental justice connection, and most environmental justice fights have a conservation nexus. This is not an either-or proposition. We must do both, and do a better job of seeing and embracing the connections that exist. For example, logging projects are increasingly being conducted for forest biomass energy—burning trees like sticks of coal, as a new dirty energy source. This not only destroys and degrades important wildlife habitat, it increases carbon emissions, and increases particulate and toxic pollution in environmental justice communities, where these dirty energy facilities are disproportionately located.