Sierra Club, Niagara Group
Minutes of Monthly meeting - February 22, 2005

Annual Dinner Meeting, Eagle House Restaurant, Main Street, Williamsville, 6PM
Jane Jontz, Chair, Presiding
Present: Jane Jontz*, Art Klein*, Steve Burns-Treasurer, Larry Beahan*, Robert Ciesielski*, Paul Maine*, Joe Gardella*, Charles Lamb* Marilyn Reeves, Kevin O'Leary, Donna O'Leary, Marie Carone, Karen Pomicter, Jana Boyer, Barry Boyer, Nan Simpson, Walter Simpson, Dorothy Lamale, Patti Clarian, Bruce Coleman, Virginia Snider, Jane Sheldon, Julie O'Neill, Kirk Johnson (* Indicates member of Exec. Committee)

Meeting called to order by Jane Jontz

1) L. Beahan presented Blake Reeves Award to Julie O'Neill, Executive Director of the Friends of Buffalo Niagara River (FBNR), for her ongoing environmental work. O'Neill, as a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo, commenced an environmental assessment of the campus. In 2002, she obtained a $168,000 grant from the DEC to study the Buffalo River. Her latest project has been to help organize the Niagara Relicensing Environmental Coalition of some 30 environmental groups and start the Niagara River Greenway Campaign through FBNR and the coalition.

2) A. Klein introduced Kirk Johnson of friends of Allegheny Wilderness (FAW) founded in 2001. Johnson gave a presentation on FAW attempts to have 8 tracts or approximately 54,000 acres of the Allegheny National Forest (ANF) in northern Pennsylvania designated as wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act. Johnson gave a history of the Act an the Allegheny National Forest. The US Forest Service in the Eastern US has generally opposed wilderness designations being applied to national forests, and has applied what FAW feels are overly restrictive limits on areas eligible for wilderness designation in ANF. Another of the problems of the designation is that 95% of the forests acreage has privately owned mineral rights.

Some questions arose as to how the proposals of FAW interact with the National Sierra Club's policy of "End Commercial Logging" (ECL), since FAW doesn't advocate the protection of the entire ANF from logging. The Allegheny Defense Project which opposes all logging in the ANF is scheduled to give a presentation to the Niagara Group.

Johnson felt that, while FAW is lobbying only for the Wilderness designation of a portion of the ANF, that its goals do not contradict those of the Sierra Club. The Wilderness Designation would enlarge the protected areas in ANF from two-percent (2%) to twelve percent (12%) of the forest.

The meeting adjourned at 9:00 PM