Today we’d like to give a shout out to now retired Sierra Club Maine lead forestry volunteer, Carole Haas. Carole’s volunteering included nearly two decades of advocacy for the environment. During her three years as Chapter Chair, she established herself as a key leader and point person on forestry issues in Maine for the chapter. During the 1990s, concerned about the unsustainable increase in clear cutting of the northern forests, the large sell off of forested lands leading to fragmentation of ownership and the use of herbicides to create monoculture forests for ease of cutting, Carole organized the Chapter’s Maine Woods Team.
In 1996 the club supported the Green Party’s Ban Clear-cutting Campaign. While we did not succeed in banning Clear-cutting, under Carole‘s leadership we gained respect, many new members and financial backing, allowing the chapter to organize an intensive lobbying effort, including the largest phone banking effort in the history of the state, flooding the state house switchboard with calls from concerned citizens supportive of our effort to pass effective forestry legislation
Carole led the chapter in proposing “The 100 Mile Wilderness” campaign to Governor Baldacci. By building strategic partnerships with northern communities and leaders in land conservation, there was a successful effort to methodically purchase significant wildlands along the 100 mile section of the Appalachian Trail resulting in over sixty miles of contiguous protection and nearly 150,000 acres of conserved land by 2010.
Along with the forest protection successes, Carole always encouraged and mentored new members and volunteers to become activists. Volunteer Kate Coddaire remembers Carole as being warm, welcoming, and friendly and says she was the reason she continued volunteering.
If you volunteered with Carole, she would love to hear from you!
Cards can be sent to Carole Haas, The Lunder Households/Cedars, 630 Ocean Ave., Portland, ME 04103.
Thank you, Carole!