Sierra Club Top Brass Order
Local Yokels To Fall In Line

SEATTLE — So much for the myth that environmental activist groups are grassroots outfits that arise spontaneously to do courageous battle over local issues.

The Sierra Club's national board has ruled that local chapters cannot support trades of public land unless they get approval from headquarters.

The action over the weekend reportedly was sparked by the Seattle chapter's support for a controversial land swap between the U.S. Forest Service and Plum Creek Timber Co.

The swap is designed to erase the ``checkerboard'' pattern of public and private lands that makes individual parcels difficult to manage along the Interstate 90 corridor over the Cascade Range.

A board resolution says ``final authority'' on whether to support the exchange rests with the board.

``What we are saying is that no chapter or group has the authority to lend support to a land exchange involving public land on its own,'' said Bruce Hamilton, conservation director at the Sierra Club's national office in San Francisco. ``It requires a second level of review and concurrence by the Conservation Governance Committee, which is a committee of the board of directors.''

The Seattle-based Cascade chapter has worked for years to put together the I-90 exchange. Other environmental activists, however, have opposed the deal.

The Sierra Club directors opposed including three pieces of land in the swap, including a parcel on Watch Mountain near Randle, where activists opposed to the exchange have been camping out in trees.

The directors also opposed giving Plum Creek lands in the Green River valley that are possible habitat for the officially "endangered" marbled murrelet, and the 2800-acre Fossil Creek parcel near Mount St. Helens.

The Cascade chapter was told to work for a land exchange under the listed conditions, and then ``present it'' to the conservation committee.

Cascade chapter leader Charlie Raines said Monday that the resolution ``certainly was not a condemnation of the exchange.''

``It was a modification of the club's position,'' Raines said. ``It acknowledges that changes need to be made.''

But LaVerne Troxel of Randle, who lobbied the Sierra Club directors, called the resolution ``a total 180-degree reversal on the land exchange.''

The exchange would transfer to Forest Service ownership about 50,000 acres of industry-owned land, including lands adjoining the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. In exchange, Plum Creek would receive about 15,000 acres.

If the Watch Mountain, Fossil Creek and Green River tracts are withdrawn from the exchange, Raines estimated, Congress would have to put up an estimated $41 million to $50 million to buy those parcels.