Places and Faces: Celebrating 50 Years of Sierra Club in Michigan
Chapter 1: Wild Place Protection
Fifty years ago next year, a hardy group of Michigan activists formed the Sierra Club Mackinac (now Michigan) Chapter with an Ann Arbor post office box for an address, a typewriter and homemade stationery for publicity, and a resolve to “give top priority to action to save the ‘Bear.’” At the time, a proposal for protecting Sleeping Bear Dunes had stalled in the U.S. Congress for six years, and by 1967 concern was growing that developers and local opposition would ruin any chance to ensure the future of this magnificent natural area. The national Sierra Club had endorsed protection of Sleeping Bear in 1961 and as early as 1965, the Sierra Club members in Ann Arbor were meeting to discuss how they could help make it happen.
The story of how this special place came to be protected is the key to Sierra Club’s longevity and effectiveness—the everyday people who volunteer to work hard and stay committed for the long haul to fight for what’s important. Leaders of the newly formed all-volunteer Mackinac Chapter, including Chair Virginia Prentice and Conservation Chair Douglas Scott, threw themselves at the goal of protecting Sleeping Bear Dunes. Despite having day jobs and other responsibilities, they managed to travel east to Washington DC to lobby legislators and west to present to the Sierra Club’s national board of directors meeting in California. Volunteers engaged in detailed field surveys of the proposed lakeshore, went to meetings, developed relationships with local supporters, conservationists and state officials, and collaborated with the local Save the Sleeping Bear Dunes Committee.
Chapter activists including Gwen Nystuen, who is still a volunteer today, publicized the proposal through the most modern communication channels of that pre-Internet time—snail mail and phone calls—to get the word out to members, media and elected officials about important issues as well as working with national staff, Congressional leaders and others to distribute information. They watched each year as the legislation made it through the Senate but stalled in the House process and redoubled efforts to secure wider support from the Michigan Congressional delegation. Prior to 1969, the legislation had four sponsors; a year later 19 of 21 Michigan Congressmen and Senators supported the proposal, according to a document dated Feb. 1, 1970 in the Michigan Chapter archives at the University of Michigan Bentley Library.
Thanks to sustained activism that began even before its official founding, the Mackinac Chapter fairly quickly saw its vision realized when Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was authorized by Congress just three years later on October 21, 1970. Today, the park covers a 35-mile-long stretch of spectacular Lake Michigan coastline that encompasses forests, beaches and dunes as well as North and South Manitou Island.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was the first major success in a long line of citizen-driven Sierra Club victories for wild places in Michigan. A few years later, we led a ten-year effort to achieve passage of the Michigan Wilderness Act in 1987 that protected 90,000 acres of old-growth forest, pristine lakes, and stunning dunes. This remarkable achievement began in 1977 when the US Forest Service kicked off its Roadless Area Review and Evaluation 2 (RARE2) process to identify and propose qualifying areas for potential wilderness designation in National Forests around the country. Sierra Club Michigan Chapter staffers Jane Elder and Sue Pemberton along with volunteers like Mark Miller, John Mitchell and Kathy Mitchell (now Kaczynski) painstakingly visited all the areas under consideration and recorded their observations on a rating checklist. Armed with this information, the Chapter identified 14 areas to promote for wilderness designation.
Politics and rifts between the environmental community and conservation organizations got in the way of quick or easy passage, but the dedication of volunteers and staff and the efforts of a few key legislators including Cong. Dale Kildee and Sen. Carl Levin ultimately won the battle when Congress passed the Michigan Wilderness Act on Dec. 8, 1987. You can read the full story as remembered by former Chapter Director Anne Woiwode, who played a key role in the effort as a volunteer and then Chapter staffer, on her blog https://annewoiwode.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/ah-wilderness/
Simultaneously with the Wilderness legislative effort, planning of management activities began for three million acres of federal lands in Michigan's three National Forests. The efforts of countless volunteers to survey the lands in question helped get 200,000 acres of old growth forest included in the US Forest Service’s plans for the Huron-Manistee and Hiawatha National Forests in 1986. Several years later, Marvin Roberson, the Chapter’s forest ecologist, and Tim Flynn helped identify specific tracts within this acreage for old growth designation. Marvin and Tim also played a major role in the protection of State Forests when they effectively forced the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to open up its planning process to public engagement and input.
Nancy Shiffler was one of the many volunteers in the woods and in meetings helping to shape the federal government’s plans for the Huron Manistee National Forest. Nancy’s participation gave her a crucial role in another long but successful Sierra Club effort to protect a wild place 23 years later. In 2003, Shiffler, a long-time volunteer who now heads the Chapter’s Beyond Natural Gas and Oil Committee, noticed that an oil and gas well had been proposed for national forest land near Grayling that was designated as old growth back in 1986. The parcel was also adjacent to the Mason Tract, which hugs a prize stretch of the Au Sable River and had “Forever Wild” designation by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in 1962. She alerted Roberson, who worked with the Anglers of the Au Sable to fight the proposal using tactics that included a successful lawsuit against the US Forest Service for failing to adequately assess all viable alternatives to the well pad siting. Nine years later, the company that sought the permit abandoned the project. Read the full story here.
These are just a few of the stories of Sierra Club Michigan’s wild place protection over the last five decades. There are plenty of others including Grand Island, a gem just off the shore of Munising in the Upper Peninsula that people like Sierra Club’s Anne Woiwode, Alison Horton and Elder spent several years fighting to preserve. It was designated a National Recreation Area in Haiwatha National Forest in 1990 after the U.S. Forest Service purchased it from its former owner, Cleveland Cliffs Inc.
To read some of the original documents from the Michigan Chapter’s archives upon which these 50th anniversary histories are based, visit this Google folder. http://tinyurl.com/SCMC50thANN
NEXT MONTH
Chapter 2: The 1976 Bottle Bill
