Has the Sierra Club’s mission drift driven members away?

Once focused solely on conservation and climate change, the Sierra Club has broadened its focus to include nearly every progressive cause — and recent reports, including one in The New York Times , show the move has caused it to hemorrhage members since its peak in 2019.

The club first gained national recognition in the 1950s, when leaders went to Washington, D.C., to lobby against the construction of hydropower dams in the Grand Canyon.

These fights were championed by outspoken outdoorsmen like Martin Litton, who spent his life running sections of the Grand Canyon in dory boats.

To convince lawmakers that the nation’s longest and deepest canyon was worth protecting, Litton would bring them the full mile down into the canyon in hopes they would see his perspective: conserving the rive