Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new report from the Sacramento Sierra Club shows there were three times as many fires along the American River Parkway last year compared to 2019. It attributes the increase to climate change and the surge in homeless camps in the area over the last few years. The rise in fires happened at the same time the county stopped enforcing an ordinance against illegal camping, the report states. The change followed a federal court decision that found that local governments could not ban camping unless they were providing alternatives, like enough shelters.

In an era when it is all the rage for businesses and organizations to make bold declarations about recognizing their racial problems, it was hardly surprising when the Sierra Club came forward with its own mea culpa. Among the flood of companies posting their black squares on social media for Blackout Tuesday, the only ones who have managed to stand out are those not bending a knee to the mob. But the fact that the Sierra Club’s introspective outreach was lost in the deluge of other virtue-signaling outlets is illustrative of its superfluousness.  The environmental outfit recently came forward to announce...

Digging up comments by Sierra Club founder John Muir set off Black Lives Matter-inspired outrage intended to depict national treasures as intrinsically racist. Want to get away from the civil strife that has torn the country apart as both the coronavirus pandemic and violent riots have turned America’s cities and cable news into a battlefield? If so, perhaps you think the ideal getaway might be a national park. There you can commune with nature and admire some of the most beautiful places in the world free from politics. Nope.The idea that national parks could be a refuge from cancel culture’s...

https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article244415312.html An environmentalist group announced they will remove monuments dedicated to its founder and renowned conservationist, John Muir, because of his ties to white supremacists. Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article244415312.html#storylink=cpy

No one is more important to the history of environmental conservation than John Muir — the “wilderness prophet,” “patron saint of the American wilderness” and “father of the national parks” who founded the nation’s oldest conservation organization, the Sierra Club. But on Wednesday, citing the current racial reckoning, the group announced it will end its blind reverence to a figure who was also racist. As Confederate statues fall across the country, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in an early morning post on the group’s website, “it’s time to take down some of our own monuments, starting with some...

The Sierra Club will remove monuments of its founder John Muir over his racist history, the environmental conservation organization announced Wednesday morning. The green group, which Muir founded in 1892, said that as the country begins to reassess the purpose and meaning of Confederate statues and memorials, “it’s time to take down some of our own monuments, starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history.” Muir, who fought to preserve Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Forest, made derogatory statements about Black and Indigenous people. The Sierra Club said that as the “most iconic figure in Sierra Club history,...

This episode examines how a serious injury sustained by a factory worker in 1867 not only changed the course of that man's life, but also set in motion a chain of events that changed the course of American history —in a way that countless people for generations have benefited from. USA!

San Francisco is unreasonably monopolizing spectacular Hetch Hetchy Valley by using it as a 117-billion-gallon reservoir, says a new lawsuit in a decades-old fight to restore the Yosemite National Park landmark. The lawsuit asks a court to require a plan for improving the city’s water system so no water is lost in restoring the valley. It also asks for modification or removal of O’Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite to let the Tuolumne River flow again. The complaint was filed Tuesday in Tuolumne County Superior Court on the 177th birthday of conservationist John Muir, who lost the bitter fight a century ago...

On Christmas Eve in 1914, famed naturalist John Muir lay in a Los Angeles hospital bed, taking his last few breaths. A prolific nature writer and passionate preservationist, the 74-year-old spent his final moments racked with pneumonia, hundreds of miles from the 17-room Martinez Edwardian mansion he called home. A century later, Muir’s former residence — now the John Muir National Historic Site — is where national park staffers and about 30 Muir enthusiasts gathered on a gray Christmas Eve morning to mark the passing of the man who co-founded the Sierra Club and preserved Yosemite and other natural park...

Environmentalists say they’ve moved past their 19th century patron saint John Muir because he represents the monied, white privilege that continues to haunt the environmental movement to this day, the Los Angeles Times reports. In an effort to connect more with Latinos and African Americans, some environmentalists are considering ditching Muir as their intellectual godfather. Environmentalists say that while they respect his ideas, they represent rich, Anglo-Saxon values that likely alienate minority communities. “Muir’s legacy has to go,” Jon Christensen, a historian at the University of California in Los Angeles’s Institute of Environment and Sustainability, told the Times. “It’s just...

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — This fall San Franciscans will vote on a local measure with national implications: It could return to the American people a flooded gorge described as the twin of breathtaking Yosemite Valley. Voters will decide whether they want a plan for draining the 117-billion-gallon Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park, exposing for the first time in 80 years a glacially carved, granite-ringed valley of towering waterfalls 17 miles north of its more famous geologic sibling. The November ballot measure asks: Should city officials devise a modern water plan that incorporates recycling and study expansion...

Here are some outrageous and racist comments by environmentalists. These are compiled and documented in my book Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club: Muir said American Indians are “mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous.” They “seemed to have no right place in the landscape,” he continued. Muir is still honored without qualification on the Sierra Club web site, which proclaims, “John Muir is as relevant today as he was over 100 years ago.” Paul Ehrlich, influential “overpopulation” guru and professor of population studies at Stanford University: In his best-selling book,...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled the design of California's new quarter Monday, which shows conservationist John Muir, a California condor and Yosemite National Park's Half Dome mountain on the coin's tails side.</p> <p>The quarter commemorates California's Sept. 9, 1850, entry into the United States, and is the 31st 25-cent coin to be unveiled as part of a 10-year, 50-state quarters program conducted by the U.S. Mint. States reveal their quarters in honor of the order in which they ratified the U.S. Constitution and joined the union.</p>

MADISON, Wis. – World-famous environmentalist John Muir never forgot the day he got his first lesson in the study of nature on the steps of his University of Wisconsin dormitory. Almost 50 years later, Muir wrote a letter to thank his old college friend, Wisconsin judge Milton Griswold, for "that wonderful botanical lesson you gave me on the steps of our dormitory, which has never been forgotten and which has influenced all my after life." The note is part of a rare collection of Muir's letters published online for the first time by the Wisconsin Historical Society. The letters offer...