A bitter battle that exposed deep divisions over the direction of America's conservation movement reached culmination with the announcement Wednesday that Sierra Club members had overwhelmingly rejected a campaign by immigration control advocates to control the venerable environmental group.
In what was termed the largest voter turnout in the Sierra Club's 112-year history, more than 22% of the group's 757,000 members cast ballots to select its governing board. The votes, which were submitted by members in March and April, were tallied Wednesday. The members elected a slate backed by the club's leaders and which received more than 110,000 votes apiece.
By contrast, a slate of candidates seeking to bring a strong immigration control agenda to the club garnered only minimal support -- former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, the best known, received 13,090 votes.
"I never argue with the voters. My congratulations to the winners," Lamm said in an e-mail shortly after the results were announced. He declined to be interviewed.
Five seats were up for grabs on the club's 15-member governing board. The election took place via mail and the Internet starting in March.
The election was the second time in less than a decade that the Sierra Club, arguably the nation's most influential environmental group, has publicly wrestled with the issue of restricting immigration. Members voted to remain neutral on the issue in 1998, following a campaign that featured accusations that conservationists were resorting to immigrant bashing, and counterclaims that political correctness was leading to environmental cowardice. The same accusations were raised this year.
Despite the 1998 vote, an increasingly vocal group of environmentalists continued to argue that the Sierra Club needed to aggressively support strict immigration controls, citing the destructive effect of unchecked U.S. population growth on the nation's natural resources.
Three prominent immigration control advocates -- UCLA astronomy professor Ben Zuckerman, Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette, and Paul Watson, leader of the group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, already had won seats to the board in recent years, putting majority control within the grasp of the dissidents in this year's election.
Sierra Club leaders said after the landslide vote that they hoped the rancorous dispute had finally been resolved.
