Many of us have heard the name once or twice, but very few of us are actually aware of what exactly it is, or what exactly The Sierra Club does. But in fact, The Sierra Club is the United States’ oldest and largest grassroots environmental campaign. Founded by John Muir in San Francisco, California all the way back in 1892, and has continued to promote a safer and healthier community, work on developing environmentally friendly technology, and help to preserve our nation’s forests and wildlife.

Since 1892, The Sierra Club has actively continued to expand on it services, its locations, its goals, and of course, its employees. Currently with offices in every state, as well as an office in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, The Sierra Club is doing its best to help out not only our own nation’s global warming issues, but those of our neighbors as well; but as you might expect, the group really has their work cut out for them.

When the group originated, neither global warming nor climate change was even on the minds of the founders. In fact, the founding fathers of The Sierra Club had three very specific goals in mind when putting the group together:

- To establish Glacier and Mount Rainier National Parks – To convince the California legislature to give up Yosemite Valley to the United States Federal government – To try and save California’s beloved redwood trees

Once these goals were fully met, The Sierra Club later acted in support of the National Park Service and started improving on forest trails and expanding on parks. They believed the Forest Service was doing an inadequate job; and in 1916 the National Park Service was indeed founded.

But what really put this organization on the map was a mid 1950’s effort to exclude the Echo Park Dam from the Colorado River Project. Thanks to this victory, The Sierra Club was all but a household name; and boasted a group membership of 15,000 strong.

Since this highly prolific victory, they have spearheaded a number of campaigns both in opposition and in support for a variety of topics. This includes such things as:

- The ongoing protection of National Forests, parks, and rivers – Opposition against the creation of new nuclear power facilities – Opposition to coal power plants – Explaining the urgency for an increased use of renewable energy

Recently The Sierra Club has announced their support for Dot Eco. Dot Eco LLC is pushing for the establishment of the .eco top level domain. This new initiative will donate over 50% of domain registration proceeds back to fund scientific initiatives and research in climate change, ocean analysis, economic policy, and other environmentally-related areas.

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