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The Delta Chapter is the Sierra Club in the State of Louisiana. We advance the cause of protecting Louisiana's environment in a variety of ways, including lobbying the state legislature in Baton Rouge, sponsoring a Mercury Public Education Campaign, raising public awareness about climate change, and working to keep the Atchafalaya Basin, America's greatest river swamp, wet and wild. The Sierra Club's members and supporters are more than 1.3 million of your friends and neighbors. Inspired by nature, we work together to protect our communities and the planet. The Club is America's oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. Environmental Voter Lobby Day to be held in Baton Rouge on May 19th.This event will also feature the kickoff of the the Louisiana Briefing Book. This is an opportunity to meet fellow activists, learn about the legislative process, show our state legislators that we care about the environment and that let them know that we vote. The briefing book kickoff is an event you don't want to miss. Feel free to bring a friend and pass this invitation on. Car pooling may be available from your area. Please sign up for this event and register for your lunch seat by emailing cleanenergy2008@msn.com or call Leslie March at 985-871-6695. Please provide your name, email address or contact number. All participants are asked to wear business attire. Louisiana's Mulch MadnessCypress forests are the state's best defense against hurricanes. So why are loggers clear-cutting the last trees? Dean Wilson slams forward the throttle on his 18-foot aluminum bateau—a flat-bottom skiff that he welded together himself—and catapults us downriver. It's April and I'm in the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest swamp—1.4 million acres (roughly 10 times the size of Chicago) wedged between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico in southern Louisiana... Read More>> So begins an article featured in the March/April issue of Mother Jones magazine. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/louisianas-mulch-madness.htmlGot You Tube?The Sierra Club does. Check out the Club's You Tube page. You might even learn a thing or two; like how to install a programmable thermostat, or a low flow shower head or how to compost in your own backyard. Good stuff just in time for Earth Day. The Save Our Cypress Coalition website has a whole new look!
Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the website and to all who are part of the Save Our Cypress campaign. The Save Our Cypress Coalition is comprised of over 160 conservation groups, religious organizations, businesses, gardening clubs, and civic organizations. The Delta Chapter is a proud member of the coalition. Act now to help expand Jean Lafitte National ParkRead this fact sheet and contact our U. S. Senators as well as Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts to ask them to support the expansion of Jean Lafitte National Park. Thank you. Welcome to our new Senior Regional RepresentativeSierra Club Friends – On behalf of the staff of the Sierra Club’s Southeast Office, I would like to welcome Jill Mastrototaro as our new Senior Regional Representative – Manager (Northern Gulf Coast). Jill will manage the delivery of our programs within the states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. She will begin her service to the Sierra Club effective March 10 and will be based in New Orleans, LA. Our office in Baton Rouge, LA will then be closed. A native of Connecticut, Jill has also spent the past decade residing in the New Orleans, LA area. Over the past eight and a half years Jill has led advocacy and outreach efforts for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation in southeast Louisiana’s 10,000-square mile watershed. Jill’s experience includes monitoring and lobbying state and federal laws including the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, spearheading a coalition to protect cypress forests, launching a campaign on sprawl using multiple media outlets, leading the state’s first effort to quantify wetland loss from unplanned development, and creating and implementing regional strategic conservation plans. Her successes include leading a broadly based coalition in getting Wal-Mart to stop the purchase and sale of cypress mulch harvested or manufactured in Louisiana, thwarting proposals such as cell towers, subdivisions, or a 10,000-acre airport in ecologically sensitive areas, protecting already stressed waterways from receiving millions of gallons of wastewater effluent, and mobilizing hundreds of volunteers to protect natural resources. Jill has authored a myriad of resources such as, A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Wetlands in the Pontchartrain Basin, and more recently, Growing Smarter: Guidelines for Low Impact Development in the Pontchartrain Basin, which have engaged and trained thousands of citizens. Jill is the founding Vice-President of the Land Trust for Southeast Louisiana, the only grassroots-based, land conservation group active in the state, and she chairs the Land Committee, negotiating land acquisitions and to-date securing $100,000 in endowment funds. She also is working to create a regional Gulf Coast network of land conservation groups. Jill serves on the board of Smart Growth for Louisiana, a non-profit working to encourage responsible land use throughout the state. She holds a Masters Degree in Environmental Policy from the State University of New York – College of Environmental Science and Forestry (Syracuse, NY) and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Environmental Science from the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY). We hope that you will join us in welcoming Jill to the Sierra Club family. Thanks! Regards – Jim Price, Southeast Staff Director, Sierra Club National Club Election held this SpringThe annual election for the Club's Board of Directors is now history. Check out whether your candidate won and all of the election results at the Club's election website: http://www.sierraclub.org/bod/2008election. The Lower Ninth Battles BackThe word "will" comes up constantly in the Lower Ninth Ward now; We Will Rebuild is spray-painted onto empty houses; "it will happen," one organizer told me. Will itself may achieve the ambitious objective of bringing this destroyed neighborhood back to life, and for many New Orleanians a ferocious determination seems the only alternative to being overwhelmed and becalmed. Read the rest of this article from The Nation at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/solnit NWF is looking for volunteers and volunteer groupsNWF is looking for volunteers and volunteer groups to help with the restoration of wildlife habitat in 2008 on hurricane-damaged state and federal lands in Louisiana. Volunteers are needed to help with the following:
We will be working in Louisiana through Spring 2008. For more information, please contact LouisianaProject@nwf.org or call Rebecca or Jenny at 225-346-6945. The website is nearly ready so please visit us soon at: www.nwf.org/louisiana
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To learn more about sustainable alternatives to cypress mulch, to see
the complete list of coalition members, to ask Lowe's, Home Depot, and
Wal-Mart to stop selling cypress mulch, and much more, visit www.saveourcypress.org.
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