Sierra Club leaders visit Utah to unveil national campaign on monuments

Using Utah canyon country as a backdrop, senior Sierra Club executives on Tuesday unveiled a renewed effort to protect the nation’s scenic treasures, highlighting environmentalists’ hopes to establish a Greater Canyonlands National Monument and shut the door on tar-sands development. The "Our Wild America" campaign also steps up the environmental group’s commitment to connect kids with nature, restore forest health and reduce the nation’s reliance on the fossil fuels behind climate change. "Pollution, mining, drilling and fracking are encroaching on some of our last remaining wild wonders, and our society is becoming increasingly disconnected from nature at a time when climate disruption is making it more important than ever to be expanding our conservation legacy," said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, author of the book Coming Clean — Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal. Brune is on a two-week road trip around the Southwest with his wife and three young children, visiting key spots like the newly designated Rio Grande del Norte and Chimney Rock national monuments and areas around Grand Canyon National Park that conservationists hope to see protected...more