Sierra Club
The
Sierra Club is an
environmental organization founded on
May 28,
1892 in
San Francisco, California by the well-known conservationist
John Muir, who became its first president. The Sierra Club has hundreds of thousands of members in chapters located throughout the
United States and
Canada. It also hires people for campaigns through the Fund for Public Interest Research, as do some other members of the
activism industry. The Club's policies are set by a fifteen-member Board of Directors. Each year, five Directors are elected to three-year terms, with all Club members eligible to vote.
In the early 20th century, the organization fought against the damming and flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Despite their lobbying, Congress authorized the construction of O'Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River. The Sierra Club continues to lobby for removal of the dam, urging that San Francisco's water needs be accommodated instead by the re-engineering of the Don Pedro Reservoir downstream. The Club also supports removal, breaching or decommissioning of many other dams.
See also: Ansel Adams
External links