The Season of Giving: Environmental Groups

This is from an e-mail sent to Sierra Club leaders by Dan Kozarsky, conservation officer for the Knapsack Subcommittee¹ (posted here with Dan's permission):

A few years ago a friend, who Carol and I met years ago on Knapsack trips, established a foundation to provide financial support to small, grassroots conservation groups with a local focus and an activist agenda. The groups all shared a common goal: the protection and restoration of native plants and wildlife, particularly on public lands in the western states and Alaska....These types of groups are making a huge difference because they consist of locals working within the community, building rapport with other locals, observing on the ground, visiting schools, etc. Every charitable dollar they receive makes a huge difference since some of these groups have annual budgets not much higher than $100,000 and a paid staff size as small as three.

Carol and I asked our friend for his top recommended groups, to inform our year-end giving, since he had done all this research....These were his favorites:

• Western Watersheds Project: They work to influence and improve public lands management in 8 western states with a primary focus on the negative impacts of livestock grazing on 250,000,000 acres of western public lands. They have field offices in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and California. (Staff of 11.)


• Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center: Defends more than 2,000,000 acres of forests, rivers, lakes, wetlands, roadless areas, old growth groves, scenic oak woodlands, and other precious areas within the central region of the Sierra Nevada. Located in the midst of a region that is still dominated by proponents of mining, logging, grazing, development, and aggressive use of resources, they are often the only voice for nature speaking up locally at hearings and meetings. Their web site says they are the only conservation organization that actively monitors the full range of logging, mining, grazing, development, and water projects in the local area. (Staff of 4.)


• Friends of the Inyo: Dedicated to preserving the Eastern Sierra's unique qualities: its diverse wild lands, scenic beauty, wild rivers, varied flora and fauna, and abundant opportunities for low-impact recreation. (Staff of 3.)


• Biodiversity Conservation Alliance: Their mission is to protect and restore biological diversity, habitat for wildlife and fish, rare plants, and roadless lands in Wyoming and surrounding states. (Staff of 5.)


• Southeast Alaska Conservation Council: Dedicated to preserving the integrity of Southeast Alaska’s unsurpassed natural environment while providing for the balanced, sustainable use of the region’s resources. They are a coalition of 17 volunteer citizen organizations based in 14 Southeast Alaskan communities. SEACC’s membership includes commercial fishermen, Alaska Natives, small-scale timber operators and value-added wood product manufacturers, tourism and recreation business owners, hunters and guides, and Alaskans from many other walks of life. (Staff of 11.)


• Oregon Natural Desert Association: ONDA's mission is to protect, defend and restore the health of Oregon's High Desert lands and water from irresponsible livestock grazing, mining, and geothermal development. (Staff of 11.)

The national organizations are the air war; these people are the ground war. While the big national organizations are doing the difficult and necessary work of trying to influence policy, these local organizations are doing the equally difficult and equally necessary job of practical, day to day protection of specific areas from specific threats. The CSERC, for example, describe some of what they do:

We engage in monitoring, fieldwork, research, and hands-on restoration projects. CSERC staff scientists read literally thousands of pages of technical documents each year and submit detailed comments in response. We testify at hearings, present educational programs, work closely with the media, run full-page educational ads, talk with key officials, and provide free consulting and support to all the local region's volunteer conservation groups....We go out into the forest to visit every proposed timber sale, road project, pesticide application, or other threat to nature on USFS lands; then we respond with written comments and legal input for controversial, potentially harmful projects....We monitor livestock grazing on public lands in the region - measuring meadow grasses and photographing meadow systems that are suffering from over-grazing, stream bank damage, or meadow down-cutting.

And so on. Basic, practical stuff, stuff that needs to be done, stuff that makes a difference.

Please consider contributing to one of these groups working at ground-level, or to some group like them helping to preserve the wild places you love.


¹Who run the Sierra Club's National Outings in the Sierra; the trips I lead are under the Knapsack Subcommittee.

[That's all, folks]