Sierra Club Wants Logging Ban In U.S. Forests Members Of Environmental Group Vote To Change Their Timber Policy By A 2-To-1 Margin

The Sierra Club for the first time is advocating an end to all commercial logging of national forests. Members of the century-old environmental group voted by a 2-to-1 ratio to change their timber policy.

Casting mail-in ballots over the past three months, members voted 39,147 to 20,287 in support of banning logging on all federal, publicly owned lands in the United States, a club spokesman said Monday.

The votes were tallied Saturday. The turnout reflected about 10 percent of the San Francisco-based club’s national membership of 587,499.

While the club opposes logging in many cases it never before formally advocated an end to all logging on national forests.

Dissident members - who recently formed a spinoff group, John Muir Sierrans - have been pressing for a formal change in the logging policy for years. Muir was the naturalist who founded the Sierra Club in 1892.

“I’m thrilled. John Muir is smiling wherever he is,” said Chad Hanson of Eugene, Ore., co-founder of the John Muir Sierrans.

“It is one of the most significant things that has happened internally in the environmental community for a long time. It helps to bridge the gap between grassroots activists and leaders of national environmental groups. It puts us on the same page in terms of a very strong offensive strategy,” he said.

Daniel Silverman, a spokesman for the club in San Francisco, said a change in daily workings of the club regarding logging was unlikely to be immediately noticeable.

“The only change will be if legislation is introduced in Congress that specifically says no logging whatsoever on federal property, then we will support that legislation,” he said.

Hanson said he and others likely would press for such legislation soon.

Mark Simmons, head of a local carpenters union in Elgin, Ore., said the change would further polarize environmentalists and timber workers in the debate over federal logging.

“The Sierra Club has lost any credibility it once had. They have become a conduit for divisiveness. They have chosen to act more like Earth First!,” he said Monday.

Ironically, club members opposing the change included Dave Foreman, a current member of the Sierra Club’s board who founded the militant Earth First!

Foreman said in an interview earlier this month that advocating a total logging ban on national forests would be bad political strategy. He said he was trying to be a “political realist.

“I get quite frustrated with true believers who hold onto some idealistic notion of no compromise,” he said.

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