Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan

So says Michigan's state motto, which has appeared in Latin (Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice) on the Great Seal of the State of Michigan since 1835.

In our final blog post of 2012, we'd like to congratulate the Michigan Sierra Club—which has perhaps done more than any other entity to keep the peninsula pleasant—on its 45th anniversary as a chapter, and the 25th anniversary of the Michigan Wilderness Act, which permanently protected ten parcels totaling 90,000 acres of national forest lands in the state's Upper Peninsula.

Sylvania Wilderness

To commemorate its anniversary, throughout 2012 the chapter held wilderness outings, film screenings, talks, readings, panel discussions, BBQs, potlucks, and hoedowns to celebrate the chapter's accomplishments, share stories, bond over what it means to be part of the Michigan Sierra Club, and gird for the challenges that lie ahead.

The chapter's victories since its creation in 1967—protecting special places, fighting for clean air and water, cleaning up toxic pollution, stopping unnecessary oil and gas drilling, passing comprehensive water-use laws—are far too many to begin listing here. But perhaps none is more meaningful than passage of the Michigan Wilderness Act.

Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness

The Michigan Wilderness Heritage Act, as it is officially called, was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on December 8, 1987, following a bruising ten-year battle during which passage of the act was the top priority of the chapter—then known as the Mackinac (pronounced MAK-in-aw) Chapter. The Straits of Mackinac connect Lake Huron and Lake Michigan and separate the state's upper and lower peninsulas.

Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness

This year, the chapter held commemorative celebrations in three areas protected by the act—in May at the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness on Lake Michigan, in July at the lake-studded Sylvania Wilderness near the Wisconsin border, and in August at the Horseshoe Bay Wilderness, just north of the Straits of Mackinac. Each event featured hikes, camping, canoeing, good food, and remembrances by key players in the political drama to protect the wilderness, including present and former Sierra Club leaders and elected officials.

Michigan Chapter Director Anne Woiwode, at left, who opened the festivities at the Nordhouse Dunes event, honed her organizing and activist chops as a young environmentalist in the decade-long fight to pass the Michigan Wilderness Act. She recalled a recent occasion when her son Pete came back from a camping trip with college friends.

"He was reveling in the beauty of a spectacular wild area between Ludington and Manistee on Lake Michigan," Woiwode said. "My ears pricked up a bit, and when he asked if I'd ever heard of the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness I broke into a big grin. We can ask for nothing better than to have our children enjoy the fruits of our labors without even knowing the fight that went on to protect such a place."

Below, Woiwode with Senator Carl Levin at the Horseshoe Bay Wilderness celebration. (Read Woiwode's account of the fight to pass the Michigan Wilderness Heritage Act.)

Photo by Aarkwilde, coutesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Sierra Club and local environmentalists in Sonoma County, California, have won a David and Goliath battle to scale back logging of old-growth coast redwoods and Douglas fir in the Bohemian Grove, above, a 2,500-acre property owned by the elite San Francisco-based Bohemian Club.

A settlement reached by the Sierra Club, the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club (BRRC), and the Bohemian Club includes numerous changes to a previously-approved logging plan that the Sierra Club and BRRC successfully challenged in court, including protection of the finest stands and largest individual trees on the property.

"We are pleased that the Bohemian Club has made significant changes to its forest management plan which will result in improved long-term protection and restoration of the majestic Bohemian Grove and its coastal redwoods and Douglas fir," says Jay Halcomb, at left, chair of the Sierra Club's Redwood Chapter, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008.

The Bohemian Grove represents one of the most remarkable remnant stands of old-growth and late successional redwood and fir forest in Sonoma County. The Bohemian Club's own publication, Walking Bohemia's Home: Introduction to the Redwoods, states that the redwoods on the property "comprise one of the two finest stands of virgin timber in the lower Russian River area."

As a result of its relatively pristine character, the Grove has significant wildlife habitat for threatened and sensitive species, including the Northern Spotted Owl. Ironically, the Bohemian Club's mascot is the owl.

The stage for the mediated settlement was set when the Sierra Club and the BRRC prevailed in Sierra Club v. CAL-FIRE in Sonoma County Superior Court last year.

The Bohemian Club, an ultra-exclusive men's club comprised of 2,500 of America's richest and most powerful individuals, had logged more than 11 million board feet of timber in the Bohemian Grove between 1984 and 2005, including old-growth redwoods.

Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), which grow only in a narrow band that extends fewer than 500 miles from Monterey County, California, to extreme southwestern Oregon, are the tallest trees on earth; coast Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), which grow from central California to central British Columbia, are second.

The fight to scale back logging in the Bohemian Grove, located 75 miles north of San Francisco, was initiated by lifetime Sierra Club member and then-Bohemian Club member John Hooper, at right.

Hooper, who with his wife Molly runs a retreat center and organic farm in Mendocino County, Ca., was invited to join the Bohemian Club in 1999. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and uncle were all members, and his grandfather used to take him to the Grove when he was a boy, instilling in him an awe of the towering redwoods.

Once he joined the club, Hooper began exploring the outlying acres of the Grove, using the club's trail map and a 1942 aerial photo that showed nine far-flung stands of old-growth redwoods on the property. In 2001, he hiked to the largest of them, Bull Barn, which the club's own literature describes as containing "the finest hillside stand of old-growth redwood in the Grove." But deep within the 54-acre stand he was startled to find several dozen of the most magnificent trees tagged for cutting.