News Blog

What does turning off the lights when you leave the room, have to do with preserving wild spaces?  Everything.  Here’s why.

Embed from Getty Images According to legend, King Arthur shall return one day. Can Earth do the same?

“There’s too much trash in the parks! Let’s do something about it." That’s what Mathieu Bonin, local Sierra Club activist, said recently. Starting in January, he’s organized three monthly litter collections in 2021 already.

The Desert Report is a quarterly publication of one of the subcommittees of the California Conservation Committee of the Sierra Club. Its concern is with conservation in the desert - flora, fauna, cultures, and wildlands. 

If you have never seen a super bloom or if you have but would like relive the beauty, here are some photos taken in Anza Borego State Park, the Antelope Valley Reserve and Joshua Tree National Park.

In the early 1970’s, Angeles Chapter outings folks saw a need to standardize training and safety management for its hugely popular - and growing - outings program. The result was a first in the Sierra Club: a Leadership Training Committee (LTC), to train candidates, and a Safety Committee to develop policies, grant ratings to leaders and investigate incidents. 

Do the pros outweigh the cons of western Joshua trees joining California’s endangered species list?

Water means different things to different people. By recording—and celebrating—all of the different ways water benefits our lives, we can value water properly and safeguard its value for everyone and everything. So, here’s a little about what World Water Day means for us at the Angeles Chapter. Tell us, what does water mean to you?

Geographic Information System (“GIS”) mapping technologies provide critical tools for the analysis of data and imagery to support grassroots activism, and provide opportunity to help effect local, regional, national, and global change.

Climate change is creating enormous Global challenges for the delivery of life-giving water. The good news is that our Southern California water agencies are beginning to act in concert to ensure that the millions of residents they serve have a reliable source of clean water even in the face of climate change and droughts.

The people behind the Poseidon project feel Orange County residents do not pay enough for water. They feel that residents can and should pay. They see a potential profit in  each glass of water, each shower and each toilet flush.  Their plan is simple, add more expensive water that we do not need into our existing water supply and then charge us more for the water we already own. This idea is so profitable that it resurfaces again and again going on nearly 20 years now, and the Sierra Club has been working hard to keep your water supply inexpensive and abundant.

Health care professionals have reassured the public that you can’t catch COVID-19 from drinking water, but what if you have other worrisome things in your water?  How do you follow the health guidance about washing your hands when you don’t have access to clean water?

For many years we have opposed this project through its many iterations. The Peripheral Canal of the 80’s, the Bay Delta Conservation Project of the 00’s, the California WaterFix & Eco Restore Project of the 10’s and now the 20’s The Delta Conveyance project. Whether informally known as the twin tunnels, the tunnel boondoggle or the tunnel, we are forever hard at work to preserve and protect the Sacramento- San Joaquin  Delta, the only and largest freshwater tidal estuary on the West Coast.

As part of the Sierra Club’s long-standing efforts to protect sources, supplies, and just access to water throughout the country, the Angeles Chapter Water Committee is preparing a tool to evaluate drinking water quality in all cities of Los Angeles and Orange counties. Each of the 123 cities will earn a score from A to F,  to be used to visualize and communicate the current state of regulation compliance and infrastructure reliability. 

Sierra Club California is launching the Organic Waste Reduction Campaign to feed the hungry, conserve natural resources, and slow down climate change. Now is the time for you to be a local environmental cheerleader, supporting your elected officials to take these actions as part of their compliance effort for Senate Bill 1383.

In 2020 we learned that our voices can be heard, progress can happen and we can make a difference.  We will continue our work this year, now focused on getting Los Angeles to phase out oil drilling altogether within the next 5 years and calling for a just transition to protect both the workers and frontline communities .  What a difference a year makes.

You can help decide the direction of the nation’s largest grassroots environmental organization by voting in the Sierra Club’s annual board of directors election. National Board members are elected for three-year terms. Read more to see who we've endorsed and how to cast your ballot.

February is Black History Month, and we take this moment to celebrate the contributions of Black leaders to the Sierra Club’s Angeles Chapter. The following members have received Chapter leadership awards, which we highlight here.

In honor of Rosa Parks' historic act of resistance—refusing to give up her seat on a bus—sparking the Civil Rights Movement, Transit Equity Day is an opportunity to raise awareness of the rights of all people to accessible, affordable public transit that runs on clean/renewable energy. 

How owls the size of small bean cans help activists protect coastal land from illegal development.  

The early (Winter) birder get the bird. Winter brings thousands of migratory birds to SoCal. Here are a few species birding enthusiasts and conservation activists should look out for.

Along with many difficulties presented from the pandemic, fire season has become increasingly worse and longer since the 1970s. We interviewed San Francisco Fire Department Captain Julie Mau to better understand the severity of the fires, changing behaviors, environmental impacts, and precautionary steps for citizens to take. Are you properly prepared for the next fire season?

Multiple choice question: If you are an ambitious Capitalist and you want to build a natural gas or coal-fired power plant, where will you build it? You may choose more than one answer: 1.) Beverly Hills, 2.) behind Mar-a-Lago, 3.) Native American land, 4.) across the street from Trump Tower, 5.) South Los Angeles, 6.) next to a public housing project, 7.) Malibu, 8.) East Los Angeles, 9.) Griffith Park, 10.) nowhere on this planet.

LA County Water District Efforts to Support Desert-Damaging Water Mining Project Falter as Cadiz Inc. Suffers Major Election Setbacks.