Honor Roll

Every September Sierra Club movers and shakers gather in San Francisco to celebrate the exceptional achievements of exceptional people. This year, the Club's highest honor, the John Muir Award, went to Angeles Chapter activist Jim Dodson for his role in winning the California Desert Protection Act. The Club's greatest public-lands success story of the decade, the law strengthens protection of 9 million acres of California desert. Starting in the early 1980s, Dodson's stellar negotiating skills impelled former California Senator Alan Cranston to introduce the legislation in 1986 and Congress to pass it eight years later. A self-appointed desert watchdog, Dodson is making sure the lands are managed to the letter of that hard-won law.

Such victories depend on formidable allies, and their efforts have not gone unnoticed. Among those recognized by the Club in other areas were Representatives Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Jim Leach (R-Iowa), whose sponsorship of the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, which would ban commercial logging on public lands, earned them the Edgar Wayburn Award, the Club's top honor for a public official; Bill Leonard, editorial writer for the Des Moines Register, and Matt Hammill, reporter for WQAD-TV in Moline, Illinois, who won the David R. Brower Award for environmental reporting; Buck Parker of Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, who received the William O. Douglas Award for environmental law; Jim Stimson, who won the Ansel Adams Award for photography; and Tayloe Murphy Jr., who won the Distinguished Service Award for his work in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Also honored were former Board director Rebecca Falkenberry, who won the Walter A. Starr Award for a former director's continuing support of the Club; Vicky Hoover, for service to the Outing program; and the Santa Fe Group and the Rio Grande Chapter, for their guide to fighting mining interests.

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