Puerto Rico named newest Club Chapter

The Sierra Club's national Board of Directors chartered the Club's newest chapter on Feb. 19.

Puerto Rican Sierra Club members formally petitioned the board to become the first newly chartered chapter in more than 10 years. Puerto Rico will be the Club's first Spanish-speaking chapter.

Sierra Club Board of Directors and Executive Director Carl Pope join founding members of the Puerto Rico chapter.

'It is with pride and pleasure that we welcome the Sierra Club of Puerto Rico as the 64th chapter of the Sierra Club,' said national Sierra Club president Larry Fahn. '[W]e are proud to support the Puerto Rico chapter's first environmental campaign calling for the permanent protection of the Northeast Ecological Corridor, which faces the risk of development by Marriott and Four Seasons.'

Over the past two years, Puerto Rico Sierra Club members have worked to urge the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to designate its Northeastern Ecological Corridor a nature reserve.

The pristine coastal area is currently threatened by the construction of over 1,900 residential and tourist units, three golf courses, and related developments of the Four Seasons' San Miguel Resort and Marriott's Dos Mares Resort.

Located on approximately 3,200 acres of the El Yunque Rain Forest on the eastern corner of the main island of Puerto Rico, the corridor is one of the Caribbean's last great unprotected areas.

The corridor contains an extraordinary array of tropical habitats seldom found in other parts of the world, and includes all of the coastal wetlands found in Puerto Rico, such as coral communities, mangroves, pre-Columbian forests, and a bioluminescent lagoon.

The diversity of habitats have made the area home to federally endangered Puerto Rican plain pigeon, the snowy plover, the brown pelican, the Puerto Rico boa, the hawksbill sea turtle, the West Indian manatee, and 40 other critical species considered rare or endangered.

In addition, the corridor is one of the most important nesting grounds for endangered leatherback sea turtles in areas under U.S. jurisdiction.

'We are proud to become the newest chapter of the Sierra Club and look forward to continuing its long history of protecting the planet here in Puerto Rico,' said Patricia Burke, the first president of the Sierra Club of Puerto Rico.

'We hope that people from throughout the island and the states will join us and other environmental organizations in our efforts to protect our beautiful, but rapidly declining island.'

Members of the Sierra Club in Puerto Rico have been working toward becoming a Chapter for more than two years. During that time, the group formed committees on conservation, outings, legislation, and membership. The group focused on urban sprawl, solid waste, and enforcement of environmental laws.

'In Puerto Rico, we need to focus on complying with and enforcing existing environmental laws before even thinking about creating new ones. We all must keep paying close attention or they will never be enforced,' said Ramón Luis Nieves, former Puerto Rico National Parks administrator and the Puerto Rico chapter's first legislative chair.