While the Eastern Shore is not lacking in the number of conservation organizations working to save the Chesapeake Bay’s ecosystem, with such outstanding groups as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, and ShoreRivers leading the way on big initiatives, it sometimes falls to smaller, grassroots-based environmental non-profits that fill the gap on the hyper-local level.
One of those groups on the Shore, whose work on plastic bag bans, the removal of carry-out packaging, or even the planting of trees, also happens to be one of the oldest in American history. The legendary Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by conservationist John Muir, has been active in Maryland for almost as long, but it was only recently that its Lower Eastern Shore Group was chartered to lend their voice and volunteers to some of these critically important initiatives as well as mobilize political action efforts in order to have greater influence in Annapolis and Washington, D.C.
The Spy recently sat down with Susan Olsen, the current chair of the Eastern Shore’s Sierra Club program, to catch up on what the organization has done since it formed five years ago, and also to talk about its tree planting program in Cambridge, and the Maryland Human Rights Amendment will make the state’s constitution recognize the right for all of its citizens a stable, healthy environment.
This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more information about the Sierra Club in Maryland please go here.
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