In this December 2000- January 2001 issue:

 

 

Are Sierra Club Priorities Being Worked On Locally?
by John Berge

 

The Southeast Gateway Group Executive Committee had a chance to review the Group’s participation in the priority programs of the Sierra Club recently when we responded to a survey sent to all the Groups, Chapters and Regional Conservation Committees. We haven’t done much on some of them, possibly because the members of the Group are unaware of what they are or possibly because of limited interest, even though the priorities were chosen by the grassroot membership. Former Speaker of the House, “Tip” O’Neil, said that “All politics is local”. Are conservation activities also just local?

Questionnaires were included for each of the four long-term priority conservation campaigns and the four additional priority programs. Those who worked on filling out the questionnaires felt it would be worthwhile to remind the membership of what these priorities are, not just by title, but with the more complete descriptions that accompanied the survey. The four long-range priority campaigns are listed below with a short summary of our activities in italics.

• End Commercial Logging (ECL) Campaign

The principal long-term goal of the ECL campaign is to end the Forest Service commercial logging program. Our long-term goals also include public education, legislative, litigation and regulatory objectives. In the interim, our goals are aimed at reforming the Forest Service budget, removing improper agency incentives to log, significantly reducing the annual volume logged on National Forests, garnering Congressional support for the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, and building effective national Sierra Club and public support and coalitions. In the next year, the ECL campaign will focus on public education, appropriations, legislation and media coverage. (We wrote some letters and attended a few meetings.)

• Wildland Protection & Restoration Campaign

The Sierra Club’s Wildlands Protection and Restoration campaign is an ambitious agenda to secure lasting protection for 100 million acres of wildlands in America over the next decade. The Wildlands campaign aims to energize, support, and inform wildlands enthusiasts and activists in every state and ecoregion so that they can protect and restore wildlands close to home and participate in national campaigns to protect threatened public lands. This year, the campaign highlighted the Wild Forest Initiative to protect 60 million acres of roadless National Forests. It also focused on six shining examples of our nation’s unique natural heritage. They are:  Florida Everglades, Maine Woods, Northern Rockies, Utah’s Canyonlands, Wild Alaska and Sierra Nevada. (Several members spoke at Forest Service hearings, testified at a County Board Committee meeting, blocking County opposition, and we wrote letters.)

• CAFO/Clean Water Campaign

The CAFO/Clean Water Campaign’s long-range goals are to stop new factory farms, implement the Clean Water Act’s zero-discharge goal for those that exist, and support environmentally sound livestock production. A CAFO is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation requiring a Clean Water Act discharge permit. Agriculture has enjoyed a 28-year exemption from virtually all clean water requirements. This campaign will bring industrial agriculture under effective environmental controls and help address the problem of non-point source pollution. Recognizing that changing CAFO policy at the state level is essential to create stronger national policies, the campaign has concentrated its efforts on building capacity to fight CAFOs at the state and local level. The campaign has provided written materials, training and on-site organizing assistance, and direct financial assistance to chapters and groups. The campaign also provides funding to build citizen water-monitoring programs, which will be useful in fighting CAFOs and in building support for the Club’s other water programs. (We wrote letters, distributed factsheets, attended some seminars and had one meeting stressing CAFOs in Wisconsin and another on water quality.)

• Challenge to Sprawl Campaign

Poorly planned development is threatening our environment, our health, and our quality of life.  In communities across America, “sprawl”—scattered development that increases traffic, saps local resources and destroys open space—is taking a serious toll. But runaway growth is not inevitable. Hundreds of urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods are choosing to curb sprawl with smart-growth solutions. The objective of our national Challenge to Sprawl Campaign is to produce national reports on sprawl and its solutions, provide material, winning campaign strategies, and training and funding to better equip Club volunteers and staff to change sprawling suburban development patterns faced by their communities. (More on this topic than any other. Held a press conference, distributed the report to County Boards, sponsored a workshop and lobbied for brownfield cleanup.)

• Global Warming Program

Global warming is the most serious environmental threat we face. The world’s leading scientists have concluded that global warming has begun. They project that within our children’s lifetimes, it will increase Earth’s average temperature 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit. This will cause a 6- to 37-inch rise in sea levels this century, causing major coastal, wetland and river flooding. Rising temperatures will allow disease-carrying rodents and insects to spread infectious diseases into new areas, cause longer and deadlier heat waves, and prompt severe drought and more frequent storms and weather extremes, which in turn can claim thousands of lives. These temperature and precipitation changes will destroy wildlife habitat and cause shifts in animal and plant ranges. Not only does the pollution spewing from America’s cars and trucks threaten public health, every gallon of gas burned adds 28 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere. Increasing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks is the single biggest step the United States can take to reduce U.S. emissions of these pollutants. (Again did letter writing, distributed factsheets and reports and distributed postcards.)

• Human Rights & the Environment Program

There is a common crisis afflicting human rights and the environment—a steady, but preventable, slide toward a “see no evil” U.S. foreign policy. Our elected officials are all too willing to cast human rights and environmental concerns aside whenever trade issues are involved. Multinational corporations, often in collusion with corrupt and undemocratic governments appear to encourage, benefit from, or directly cause human rights and environmental violations overseas in order to increase their profit. All too often, environmental activists have been the targets of these violations. The Sierra Club believes that in order to protect the environment from corporate and government malfeasance, that the civil and political rights of environmentalists should be protected. Our objectives in a joint campaign with Amnesty International are to increase pressure on the U.S. government to include the human rights of environmental advocates as a central feature of its foreign policy, and to provide direct grassroots support for activists in other nations, who are confronting corporate and governmental abuse.  (Showed a video, wrote some protest letters, but not much else.)

• Global Population Stabilization Program

In the 21st century, the connections between population growth, wasteful consumption, and environmental degradation are increasingly clear. The new millennium is beginning with six billion people on earth, of which one billion are young people between the ages of 15 and 24, at the height of their reproductive years. The ecological footprint of human population is at the heart of dramatically increased rates of species extinction, deforestation, desertification, climate change, and the destruction of natural ecosystems. The goals of the Global Population Stabilization Program are to protect the global environment and provide a brighter future for the children of the world by stabilizing population and addressing wasteful consumption in the context of social and economic equity. To achieve these goals, the Population Program works to develop a grassroots constituency of conservationists to support an approach that integrates information and access to family planning services, girls’ education, and women’s empowerment with environmental protection efforts. (We did more on this in previous year, but wrote some letters to the editor, etc.)

• Responsible Trade Campaign     

Our economy has gone global; our environmental standards have not. American corporations are taking jobs, capital, and know-how overseas, but not their obligation to the environment. Instead of raising the rest of the world to American standards of air and water quality and wilderness and wildlife protection, competition in the global economy is creating pressure to reduce protections at home. The Sierra Club is promoting responsible trade that raises environmental standards among our trading partners, holds corporations accountable for their behavior regardless of where they operate, and defends U.S. environmental laws from being attacked as trade barriers. The Sierra Club does not oppose trade, but we believe that trade  rules should not be used to compromise environmental standards. To clean up America’s polluted international trade policy, the Sierra Club is urging President Clinton to take executive action to: open the making of WTO and US trade policy to citizen participation; conduct a thorough, objective, and participatory environmental assessment of the WTO, NAFTA and other trade agreements; and fix current trade rules so that they no longer undermine our hard-won environmental and health standards. (Probably did less on this priority than any of the others.)

If one or more of these priorities interests you and you would like us to schedule programs or to work on them during 2001, contact one of the ExCom members listed on the back of this newsletter, before the Planning Retreat listed in the calendar on page 2. Better yet, why not attend the Retreat?

 

Calendar:

December 5: Farm Forum on preserving the family farm at Waukesha County Technical College, 800 main St., Pewaukee at 1:00–4:00 p.m. or 6:00–9:00 p.m. (See article on page three)

December 9: John Muir Chapter Executive Committee Meeting at the First United Methodist Church in Baraboo, starting at 10:00 a.m.

December 14: Southeast Gateway Group Executive Committee Meeting, 7:00 p.m. at Messiah Lutheran Church, corner of Durand Avenue and Pritchard Drive in Racine. Election of 2001 Officers and appointment of Committee Chairs. Both new and retiring ExCom members should attend.

December 21: Southeast Gateway Group Holiday Party beginning at 7:00 p.m. at Messiah Lutheran Church, corner of Durand Avenue and Pritchard Drive in Racine. Also installation of the 2001 Group Executive Committee will occur.

January 1: Deadline for the next issue of the Southeast Sierran.

January 13: Annual planning retreat for the Southeast Gateway Group from 8:30 until we are done (surely by 3:00 p.m.) at Messiah Lutheran Church, corner of Durand and Pritchard Drive in Racine. Lunch will be served. Open to all who have an interest in what we will be doing. This will include the January ExCom meeting.

January 18: Southeast Gateway Group General Meeting with Patti Nagai, Horticulture Agent for the University of Wisconsin Extension Service in Racine at the Kenosha Northside Library, starting at 7:00 p.m.

January 20: John Muir Chapter Executive Committee Meeting at the First United Methodist Church in Baraboo, starting at 10:00 a.m.

UW Extension Horticulture Agent to Speak at January 18 Meeting

Dr. Patti Nagai (pronounced Nah-guy), the UW Extension Horticulture Agent for Racine County, will speak at the January 18, 2001, meeting of the Southeast Gateway Group. “As a member of a four-county Urban Initiative Team partnering with UW-Parkside and neighborhood groups, I am working to help make our communities better places to live. Our focus is on education, with topics ranging from land use issues to parenting to youth to gardening,” she said.

An ongoing Youth Gardening Program has been in place for more than five years, partnering with the Racine/Kenosha Nutrition Education Program, neighborhood businesses and churches. A new Urban Master Gardener program was begun this past year. Master Gardener Volunteers provide more than 1500 hours of community service per year to Racine County projects. Patti will discuss how UW Extension works in our community, and what is being planned for the future.

Patti is a graduate of Cornell University and Mississippi State University with degrees in Agronomy and Horticulture and post-doctoral work at Purdue University. She has done research in Japan studying natural biodiversity and was a high school biology teacher and an interior plantscape maintenance supervisor before coming to Racine.

Since Gateway Technical College could not assure us of a room on the Kenosha campus at this time, the meeting will be held in the Kenosha Northside Library. Because of their strict closing time, we want to start promptly at 7:00 p.m.

 

Welcome New Members

Delavan: Mrs. Elton Lees, Jack Wallace, Jr.

East Troy: Patricia Kies, Sandra Snow

Kenosha: Robin L. Chick , June Grogan, Elan Namath, Patricia S. Pechura

Pleasant Prairie: Charles Knickrehm

Racine: Glenn Cordon, David V. Holmes, Christopher & Sandy Jamieson, Janet LeSeur, Robert C. McKee, Roland Rheaumeh, Kay Schulz, Gertrude Tobias

Twin Lakes: David Johnson

From the Rockin’ Chair
by Lila Berge

 

By the time you get this there should be a considerable reduction in political hot air (pollution ?) coming over the radio and television, so I want to devote my last column as SEGG chair to several water quality issues.

A new organization is being formed to protect, restore and sustain the ecosystem of the Root and Pike River Watersheds.  This Watershed Initiative Network (WIN) will be funded by grants from the Racine Community Foundation and the Greater Kenosha Area Foundation. Volunteers and organizations are needed to help evaluate projects, which may involve farming, wildlife, recreation, storm water, education, etc.  

The WIN concept is based on the success of Saginaw Bay, Michigan projects. For more information, call Dave White at River Bend Nature Center, (262) 639-0930.

The Wisconsin Wetlands Association and Sierra Club are fighting a large wetland fill in Superior where there are seven rare species of wetland plants, including smooth black sedge which is found nowhere else in the state. Unbelievably, the 34.6 acre wetland is to be filled so they can build a new middle school, playfields, football field and parking lots! This would be the largest wetland fill since the DNR adopted Wetland Water Quality Standards, NR 103 in 1991. The school district recently got permission to fill another 14.92 acres nearby for an elementary school. Such wetlands should be protected and used to provide environmental education about the value wetlands provide for wildlife and water quality…not sacrificed for development of any kind.

There is another chapter in the Crandon Mine saga. In October the Canadian company Rio Algom sold out to a South African mining company called Billiton. The Crandon mine has now gone from Exxon Coal and Minerals (1975) to Exxon and Phelps Dodge (1992) to Exxon and Rio Algom (1994) to Rio Algom (1998) to Billiton. The anti-mining coalition in Wisconsin is urging the new owner to cut its losses and write off the Crandon mine. Rio Algom wasted $65 million trying to get it permitted, but so far Billiton isn’t revealing its plans. 

Some background on Billiton: the mining giant Gencor took it over from Royal Dutch Shell in 1994. In 1995 the South African regulatory control over mining was nearly nonexistent, and the industry was directly responsible for 100% of highly toxic pollutants entering the waters. The industry record of worker health and safety was horrific, with hundreds of miners dying annually for at least the previous 30 years. White owners of South African mining took full advantage of Apartheid’s labor laws and cheap labor. Such history makes the passage of a ban on the use of cyanide in Wisconsin mining absolutely critical now. The fight over Crandon goes on.

A $7.8 billion plan to restore the Florida Everglades and reverse damage from 50 years of ill advised dredging and canal building by the Army Corps of Engineers has been the centerpiece of congressional efforts to pass the Water Resources Development Act 2000 (WRDA). The House added a string of pork projects to their version, encouraged “mission creep” and lacked civilian oversight or controls. For these reasons the Sierra Club had opposed passage of WRDA 2000 and urged passage of the Everglades $1.4 billion separately. When the Senate stripped most of the pork projects out of WRDA it passed. The first steps to restore the Everglades include ten construction and four pilot projects. It is expected to take 30 years and $7.8 billion to complete.

Cleanup of the Fox Rivers in Wisconsin is also going to take decades. A “Friends” organization has formed in Waterford to address sedimentation and other issues on that Fox. The other Fox was heavily contaminated by paper mills in the Green Bay area for decades. Getting agreement on cleanup of that river is proving far more difficult.

Finally, I want to thank members of our 2000 Executive Committee, our Program Chair, Nita Larson, our Environmental Education Chair, Donna Peterson, our Conservation chair, John Berge, our legislative watchdog Jean McGraw and the Editor of this newsletter, Gary Zumach.

Happy Holidays everyone! Rock on.                                    


Forums Bring Farmers & Activists Together to Save Family Farms

Wisconsin Citizen Action has been holding forums across the state for farmers, food quality activists, environmentalists, rural development advocates and anyone else who wants to help pass state legislation to preserve the family farm system of agriculture, promote healthy rural communities and protect our family farms and environment from a pending 50% increase in industrial livestock operations. At forums held recently in Monroe and La Crosse, more than 70 participants learned more about the the problems facing Wisconsin’s family farmers, the environmental challenges for both large and small farms, potential legislative solutions and strategies for passing a Wisconsin Family Farm Protection Act. Participants also offered input and suggestions on what our state government can do to protect family farms and the environment. The last forum in the current series, and the one closest to us, is scheduled for Waukesha County Technical College, 800 Main St., Pewaukee, WI, on Tuesday, December 5. There will be two identical sessions: one from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and the other from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. For more information call Sam Gieryn at (608) 256-1250.

Your Legislative Watchdog
by Jean McGraw

When you read this, the election will be over; and the prospects for protecting the earth will have taken a big upswing or a big downswing. I shouldn’t say the earth; it’s in no danger though it might take some time to repair the damage we have done. No, rather I am concerned that the tiger, the panda and the human might go the way of many other extinct species. It couldn’t happen? There used to be billions of salmon, now down to a few thousand in the Pacific Northwest. Remember the billions of passenger pigeons.

That aside, my subject is diet. There is little we can eat today without its problems unless we grow it in our own  garden. Genetically modified foods are permeating our cereal, our bread and our TV dinners. The European Union will not permit the importation of genetically modified grains and foods. Do you really think all those countries would ban foods or grains without pretty solid reasons? But we have to eat them and aren’t even told we are doing it.

Take meat. It’s laced with antibiotics since it’s impossible to raise steers and hogs in the close quarters of factory farms (50 now in Wisconsin) without constant infections and diseases. Not to mention it is a most inhumane way to treat our fellow animals. If meat were raised and slaughtered in a humane way, one could have much less guilt. Give us the old barnyard and pasture where animals led a pretty good life until the day of reckoning came. And then often just a quick shot meant the end.

Much of our milk no doubt is laced with BGH which makes dairy cattle much more susceptible to disease with resulting antibiotic contaminants in our milk.

Seafood? Endangered turtles are being slaughtered along with the shrimp catch. In fact, any sea life, edible or inedible, that gets in the way of trawling nets, is destroyed. The entire sea bottom population is killed along with the desired food. The dead are thrown back into the sea. Steller sea lions in Alaska are dwindling every year and are endangered because humans are eating pollock, which used to be a trash fish, and which is the sea lions’ staple diet.

The once boundless bounty of the sea no longer exists because greedy humans are overfishing everything. Indigenous peoples who relied on the sea for food are finding it isn’t there. In some cases they are suffering from malnutrition and starvation. Some of our favorite food fish stocks are severely depleted: lobster, bluefin tuna, seabass, cod, orange roughy, red snapper, shark, shrimp and swordfish probably should no longer be fished.

Unfortunately, it seems we must pay a price for every technological advance which makes our lives easier. There would seem to be only two solutions: reduce the world population to the point where resources can be sustained, or allow war, famine and disease to take care of the problem while the fortunate few remain on their island of prosperity and careless over consumption.

Do you really believe the gurus who think the problem can be solved with genetically engineered crops (incidentally enriching themselves beyond belief)?

The Navy’s latest project to protect us from a nonexistent force of aggressive nuclear submarines is an oceanic radar system which emits tremendous noise over huge areas of ocean.  After a recent Navy battle maneuver in the Caribbean, deafened whales with burst eardrums were washed up the shore. It is now undeniable that the Navy’s high-powered sonar systems can and do kill marine animals.

In the meantime we continue blithely on our lifestyle of over consumption with no regard for the welfare of God’s creatures, either animal or human. It’s hard to see how this can be acceptable to men of good will.

A third solution to world problems would be the resumption of the nuclear arms race—probable if the U.S. implements its Star Wars missile program (which doesn’t work) which violates anti-nuclear proliferation treaties. Other nations have threatened to increase their nuclear arsenal if we do this. A mistake would take care of all of our problems. Any survivors would have a different set of problems.

I realize I’m preaching to the choir; and most citizens, overworked and underpaid, are too busy with their own problems of immediate survival to think much about the problems of world management; but all of us need to actively involve ourselves in the education of the public. Remember Cassandra who predicted the fall of Troy, and no one listened because Troy was too strong, too rich and too well defended to suffer defeat.

However, I do hope I can do a little to protect my fellow human beings and the beautiful earth we enjoy from Armageddon.

 

Christmas Bird Count (CBC) Volunteers Needed

The first Christmas Bird Counts were started on Christmas Day 1900. It was then that readers of Frank Chapman’s publication Bird-Lore were urged to begin a new holiday tradition of counting birds, rather than engaging in Christmas “Side Hunts” where groups that brought in the biggest pile of feathers won.

The CBC tradition has continued since. Count areas nationwide have grown from 27 to over 1800 today across our hemisphere. The data from 100 years of CBC’s have yielded valuable insights into the shifting patterns, distributions, and population trends of bird species during the count period, which runs from December 14 to January 5.

Field observers are assigned a portion of a designated 15-mile diameter circle. Getting out by car and on foot we aim at counting as many birds of as many species as we can find. The more people that help, the smaller the area that each group has to cover on that day. Those that only have time for counting birds at their feeders are also needed.

The following is a list of four count areas in the area of SEGG, and their respective dates and contact persons. To see a picture of the count area locations in detail, visit the SEGG website.

• Burlington CBC: Sunday, December 17, John Bielefeldt, (262) 514-2376

• Kenosha CBC: Saturday, December 16, Ron Hoffmann, (262) 654-5854

• Lake Geneva CBC: Saturday December 30Bryce & Paula Dreeszen, (262) 248-8884, wbulg@elknet.net or Patricia Parsons, (262) 248-1232

• Racine CBC: Saturday, December 16, Eric Howe, (262) 633-0086, seggoutings@usa.net

David Brower, Dead at 88

The Sierra Club mourns the death of David Brower, who shaped the face of the modern environmental movement and helped guide the Club’s rise to national prominence. Brower died Sunday, November 5, at his home in Berkeley, California, at the age of 88.

Brower, a Sierra Club member since 1933, served as the Club’s first executive director, a position he held from 1952 through 1969.    

“The world has lost a pioneer of modern environmentalism,” said the Sierra Club’s president, Dr. Robert Cox. “Like the California redwoods he cherished, David towered above the environmental movement and inspired us to protect our planet. If not for David’s leadership, the Grand Canyon could well have been dammed—but he led the fight tooth and nail to preserve that awesome treasure. His colleagues at the Sierra Club are deeply saddened by his death. We will miss the Archdruid for both his vision and his courage.

“In the last decades of his life, David’s passion became restoring the earth from the damage people had wrought,” Cox continued. “David spread the gospel of what he called ‘Global CPR’—the need for conservation, preservation and restoration to repair our world. As a new generation of environmentalists picks up David’s mantle and practices what he preached, restoration well may become David’s greatest and longest-lasting legacy.”

Perhaps Brower’s best-known accomplishment was his success during the 1960’s in leading a Sierra Club campaign to block two hydroelectric dams proposed for the Grand Canyon. Brower took out full-page ads in The New York Times equating the proposal to flooding the Sistine Chapel. He also led Sierra Club efforts to pass the Wilderness Act, halt dam construction in Dinosaur National Monument, and create Kings Canyon, North Cascades and Redwoods National Parks and Point Reyes and Cape Cod National Seashores.

An avid mountain climber and skier, Brower served in the 10th Mountain Division during World War II and pioneered 70 first-ascents in an outdoor adventure career that took him around the globe. In addition to leading the Sierra Club, Brower was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times, and he founded the Sierra Club Foundation, League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute. Through Sierra Club Books, Brower also launched the genre of large-format conservation photo books to heighten public awareness of wildlands, bringing images of America’s landscapes and a strong conservation ethic into people’s homes.

UN Panel Raises Global Warming Predictions

The United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change reports stronger evidence that human activities are influencing climate and that the air temperature of Earth is likely to increase more during the coming century than previously predicted. The panel estimates the average global air temperature at the Earth’s surface will increase between 2.7 and nearly 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed.

In its report five years ago, the panel predicted a warming of 1.8 to 6.3 degrees. The predicted warming was increased because concentrations of sulfates in the atmosphere, which cool the Earth, are expected to dramatically decline in industrialized countries. 

The report, distributed to governments at the end of October and to be reviewed at a meeting of government representatives next year, is the first full-scale update of the state of climate science since 1995. Have you checked your CO2 emissions lately?

 

Ice Age Trail Activity

Notes: All work activities will begin at 9:00 a.m. unless otherwise noted. The highway 12 parking lot is approximately 5 miles east of Whitewater, or 2.5 miles west of LaGrange. Trail maintenance work may include grubbing to remove stumps, trimming back growth, painting blazes, installing erosion control, clearing new trail, litter control, etc. For trail work bring water, lunch, work gloves and work tools such as loppers or bow saws. Wear long pants and long sleeve shirt, to protect from poison ivy, prickly bushes, etc., suitable footwear and a hat. Depending on the location and conditions, insect repellent, sunscreen or rain gear may also be useful. Contact Kangaroo to volunteer for community service or special projects at times other than those listed below.

Contact Persons:  Bill (Kangaroo) Knickrehm, (608)883-2825;  Barb or Jerry Converse, (262) 473-7304; Sue Clymer, (262) 632-6968; Gary Klatt, (262) 473-4973; Gerry Emmerich, (262) 642-5641; Dolly McNulty, (262) 728-8351; Ingrid Larson, (262) 728-6661; Sally Ward, (262) 495-8362; Vince Lazzaroni, (262) 248-824; June Wheeler, (262) 889-4240.

December 9, Saturday, 9:00 a.m.; Hike on the Emma Carlin Trails. On Cty Z, 1 /4 mile south of Hwy 59. State park sticker required.

December 21, Thursday, 7:00 p.m.; Regular Meeting, FirStar Bank in Elkhorn.

 

LAST CHANCE! Get your 2001 Sierra Wilderness ($11) & Engagement ($12) Calendars. Call Dian Sorenson at (262) 633-6974