Candidate Statements

I‘m currently serving on and a candidate for our Redwood Chapter Executive Committee. I am a SClub member of 42 years and bring decades of environmental activism and professional knowledge.

I’ve enjoyed backpacking & hiking here and abroad, and whitewater rafting, including volunteer guiding for SClub’s SF Inner-City Outings for deaf, blind, disabled, and inner-city teens.

For years, I supported SClub through writing campaigns to friends. Currently I’m chair of our Chapter’s Northern California Forest Committee (4+yrs), working w/small landowners & agencies to create resilient forests, oak woodlands, and landscapes in light of past/current abuses, climate change, and wildfires. We’re also pressing PG&E to stop destructive tree removals and comprehensively update their antiquated overhead infrastructure.

I have an MS in Environmental Management from USF. While working at CDFW, I was a facilitator, and member of several working groups: Statewide Phytophthora, Wood for Salmon, Marbled Murrelet Zone 6, and Strategic Planning. Program positions included Habitat Conservation-CESA, Natural Community Conservation Planning, liaison to the SFPUC, and Timber Conservation.

Working at the Resource Renewal Institute under former CA Secretary of Resources, Huey Johnson, I monitored global sustainability efforts, worked w/New Zealand’s Resource Management Act creator, had discussions in The Netherlands with their Environmental Ministers of Strategy, and facilitated round table discussions at the NYC UN Commission for Sustainability.

I created a wolf education program, lecturing at universities, land trusts, high schools, and Yosemite ranger campfires. As a Board member of The Wildlife Society, I served as Chair on the Conservation Affairs Committee.

I’ve been active with environmental issues since moving to Sonoma County in 1995. This has included turning up at meetings to advocate for more walkable and bikeable streets (Active Transportation). Walking, rolling, and cycling safety are often forgotten in the complexity of building roads – yet it often does not take much to add safety features in the planning stage. Making it enjoyable to be active locally, and get to public transport, helps to reduce the amount of pollution we cause with our gas-guzzling vehicles.

Professionally as a software engineer, I worked in the field of remote stream monitoring and supporting the work of others in monitoring the health of our streams and rivers. This has brought me into advocating for the endangered fish species that are still surviving in our streams, and the ecological integrity of our rivers. They are the indicator of the health of a hidden world. It has been a joy to donate some land to complete a walking trail behind our house along the upper Laguna da Santa Rosa that is now well used by the local community.

I have volunteered as a member of the Cotati Planning Commission for over 14 years, attempting to influence a more environmentally sensitive way of being, though it’s a tough balancing act and more needs to be done. A lifetime member of the Sierra Club, I have appreciated the opportunity to volunteer with several local environmental groups, and I would welcome the opportunity to serve on the Ex-Comm.

Raised on eighty wild acres in Lake County, California, I became an ecologically conscious land steward at an early age. I was educated at Oxford University and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. My doctoral work examined how humans, both historically and in present time, interact with nature, and for three decades I taught university courses in environmental ethics and history. I have published articles and book chapters on sustainability, most recently in Climate Abandoned (2019) on the loss of polar ice. I have lectured in Europe, Africa, Argentina, Australia and numerous cities in the United States.

My academic career is balanced by activism in support of the ecological well-being of Northern California’s Coast Range. The Valley Wildfire that burned our family home in 2015 forced me to reexamine the age-old question of how humans engage with nature. How can we work with, instead of against climate-related risks like wildfires, floods, landslides, etc.?

Interested in regenerating indigenous habitats, I serve as an educator in teaching the return of “good fire” to the land. I co-founded the Lake County Prescribed Burning Association, which enjoys a close collaboration with the Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance of the Pomo people of Robinson Rancheria in Upper Lake. Our EcoCultural Fire Crew brings together a wide diversity of people to restore cultural burning as an ecological practice.

I’m a member of the SClub Redwood Chapter’s Forest Committee and of the SC National Committee that developed a policy statement endorsing the use of fire as a management practice.

After attending inspiring discussions at an in-person Redwood Chapter meeting, I joined the Sierra Club with a renewed understanding that voices can speak together, effectively, for wild places experiencing changes—including all the elements of climate change we are witnessing in California and beyond. My recent work in Sierra Club includes serving on the National Task Force formulating the policy for Prescribed Fire (accepted as policy) and currently serving on the National Task Force formulating the policy on Forest Biomass Energy. As a State Forest Committee member, I have been part of collaborative efforts including drafting a Forest Biomass Resolution starting in 2023, completed in early 2024. The Resolution was voted in by the California Conservation Committee (CCC) and the Council of Club Leaders (CCL).

As an active member of the Sonoma community, I served as Sonoma County’s tenth Poet Laureate starting in 2018, giving me opportunities to bring students, audiences, and fellow writers together in a series of field walks and writing workshops during and after the recent wildfires. I am also part of an all-volunteer organization called SOCOCAN! (Sonoma County Climate Activist Network, a network of 50 organizations and 200 individuals). More informally, I have joined and led field trips with Sierra Club members hiking locally in Sonoma and across the State, and worked on my own writing, film, and outdoor explorations. Realizing that the Sierra Club holds the collective environmental wisdom of decades, I am honored to serve as a member, to continue working with you all.

I am pleased to submit my name in nomination for election to my second term as an At Large member of the Redwood Chapter ExCom. I am also in my third year as a member of the Sonoma Group ExCom. I’m currently a member of several SCC Committees to include Conservation, the 30x30 Task Force and Forest Committee. I’m also a member of several Grassroots teams: the Wildlands Team and BLM Wilderness and Recreation Issues sub-teams and the Water Sentinels Western Waters and Colorado River Task Force.

I’m currently serving in my first year as Chair of the Redwood Chapter after serving as Vice-Chair and Acting-Chair in 2023. Continuously expanding my knowledge of our issues, developing relationships and supporting the teams and members of Redwood Chapter has been an amazing and rewarding experience. I learn something or meet someone new every day.

2025 presents countless issues and work to do. Offsetting climate change, 30x30, water issues and SLR, forest preservation, UGB threats and sprawl developments, transportation, clean energy and offshore wind, dam removal and habitat restoration to name a few.

Within the Chapter, hiring a full-time Director, support for our outstanding Groups and Committees, leadership and member recruitment, fundraising, newsletters and social media. With so much to do, it is my hope to be able to continue serving in my current role and doing whatever I can to preserve and protect the people and lands of the Redwood Chapter.

As an active and longtime Sierra Club volunteer, I am running to serve on the Redwood Chapter Executive Committee to partner with other North Bay leaders and members to fulfill Sierra Club’s mission to “explore, enjoy and protect the planet.” We are tackling many environmental issues from climate change and forest protection to clean energy and expanding national monuments and wilderness areas. Together, with such an amazing brain trust among us, we can win strong land use policies, conserve lands and waters to achieve 30 X 30 goals, and elect environmental candidates. We can stop the harm by fighting back against sprawl development, preventing commercial biomass and curbing threats to our coast from offshore wind and industrial ports. Let’s also connect by hiking and enjoying the spectacular open space, parks, and wilderness areas in the Redwood Chapter.

Currently I serve as Conservation Chair of the Redwood Chapter, on the Executive Committee of the Sonoma Group and as Vice Chair of the CA/NV Wilderness Team. Previously, I was Chair of the Sonoma Group. For 20 years from 1997 to 2017, I led Sierra Club backpack trips for the San Francisco Bay Chapter. My career spanned three decades as an environmental advocate for Greenbelt Alliance, Turtle Island Restoration Network, and Friends of the Earth where I championed winning campaigns to protect the natural world. I’ve lived in Sonoma Valley for 35 years. A slightly dated interview with me appears on our website here https://www.sierraclub.org/redwood/teri-shore

I have been honored to participate in the Lake Group ExCom for this past cycle and hope to continue. My current position is as Executive Director of the Seigler Spring Community Redevelopment Association (SSCRA), a local 501(c)3 company formed in the aftermath of the 2015 Valley Fire that devastated South Lake County. I was the first chairman of the Cobb Area Council, established in 2016 and have served on the Socioeconomic Subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Committee for the Rehabilitation of Clear Lake. I am currently on the Local Area Plan Advisory Committee Over the past 9 years, SSCRA has brought over a million dollars in federal, state and foundation funding for programs in the Cobb Area focused on Fire resilience, watershed protection and grassroots community building. My work in this area was preceded by a career in environmental and development policy at the Federal, state and local level. I worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington DC from 1991 to 2000 on policies and programs related to coastal ecosystems and sustainable development. From 2000-2003, I worked at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) in San Francisco on interagency cooperation related to sustainable community development policy. From 2003-2015, I worked at the Napa County Transportation and Planning Agency to build partnerships among five cities and the County on development related to housing, transportation and overall development. My priorities serving in the Sierra Club are building effective local collaborative programs, especially building working relationships with local Tribes.

I have been a member of the Lake County Group Executive Committee for many years and humbly ask for the honor of serving for another term.

I have been a Sierra Club member for numerous years, and have served on the Lake Group Executive Committee as secretary since 2020. I hold a self-designed masters degree in Co-creating Sustainable Futures and currently work on elevating health and equity in a statewide project for the California Health Collaborative. I'm a certified mindfulness teacher and enjoy hiking, backpacking, and solitude in nature. As climate crisis and environmental collapse quickens, I feel it imperative to take more action to help slow, if not reverse, these trends. I've chosen to focus on bringing whatever skills and talents I can to our local Sierra Club Lake Group efforts as my contribution. I appreciate your consideration.

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To all my fellow Sierra Club members, I am excited once again to work on your behalf in the North Group. I have enjoyed the past two years as a member of the board and learned that there is always more to do, and always more to learn.

To those who don’t know me, allow me to introduce myself. I have been a Sierra Club board member for the past two years. I am a father of three with four grandchildren. I write a monthly climate change article for the local paper. I worked for the California State Parks for six years, which included being a park interpreter, and I am a certified interpretive guide. I was a branch president, vice-president, steward and California district officer for the National Association of Letter Carriers while delivering mail for 34 years. During that period I co-directed the City of Arcata’s Homeless Task Force. I graduated from Humboldt State University, now called Cal Poly Humboldt, with a degree in Resource Planning and Interpretation. While attending university, I co-directed a Youth Educational Service’s program on campus called 5H. My favorite past-time is outdoor photography.

The Northcoast is a beautiful and scenic area that has many estuaries, rivers and forests that are being impacted by human activity, climate change and sea level rise. I would like to continue my work to protect these areas and help make a difference. I would appreciate your vote.

I am a life member of the Sierra Club and I served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Solano Group in the 1990s. I’m a biologist and I became active in the leadership of the Sierra Club to advocate for preservation of wildlife habitat, open space, and agricultural land. I teach biology and biotechnology at Solano Community College. For the last four decades, Solano County has responded to the tremendous pressure of the Bay Area’s urban sprawl by passing the Orderly Growth Initiative that limits development to inside of the seven cities of Solano County, and by placing urban growth boundaries around several of the cities.

Now the farmlands, open space, and wildlife habitat of Solano County are under the greatest threat in our history. A group of Silicon Valley billionaires secretly bought over 50,000 acres of the best protected farmland in California for $900 million and propose to build a new City of 400,000 people (doubling the population of the county). If successful, this effort would represent a privatization of urban planning by land speculators and they would like to use it as a model elsewhere. Recent reports indicate that this plan would cost the County $10 million per year and would threaten the mission of Travis Air Force Base, our largest employer. The project threatens dryland farming, vernal pools, native grasslands, and marshes. I would like to rejoin the Executive Committee to help guide the Sierra Club in the fight against this unethical and damaging project.

My name is Joe Feller and I am running for election to the Executive Committee for Solano County Group. I was a member of the ExCom for 12 years and have served as chair of the Group.

While it has been my honor to act as past chair for 8 years, I believe that the challenges of the future will be greater than we have ever faced. While we have fought and won against the Orcem cement factory, stopped a potential coal terminal in Vallejo and forestalled the California Forever project, we have a more arduous future.

Under our leadership, I hope to enter a new era of environmental activism by stopping the development of Open Space on Mare Island, pumping carbon into Suisun Marsh, and getting all schoolchildren into open space. We will also honor our twenty-eight year commitment to the SF Bay Flyway Festival and an environmental Earth Day effort in our communities.

If you support this platform please vote for myself, Myrna Hayes, Gordon McMahon and Belinda Seidemann. A safe and healthy environment is our goal, not destroying our open space for out of town developers.

I serve on the Executive Committee of the Sierra Club Solano Group and would be honored to continue in that role. I’ve been a Sierra Club member for as long as I can remember, and I’m deeply engaged in local, state and federal climate action and environmental policy.

I trained as a Climate Reality Leader in 2017 in Pittsburgh PA with former Vice-President Al Gore. The training was life-altering and made it undeniably clear that we need to change the trajectory we are on for ourselves and for future generations. I serve on the Leadership Team of the Climate Reality Bay Area Chapter as Local and State Policy Action Co-chair and was Chapter Co-chair in 2022. I lead a Solano Climate Policy Action Team as part of CRBA, which I established in 2019. I also serve on the Board of Sustainable Solano.

I’m a pediatrician and practice in Solano County. I serve on the Napa-Solano Medical Society Board, am a delegate to the California Medical Association and serve on their Council on Legislation. I work with other physicians to bring the issue of the climate crisis to the forefront of the medical community. I serve on the Board of SF Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility as well as on the Steering Committee of the Medical Society Consortium for Climate and Health.

I’m committed to my community, to reversing the climate crisis and to creating a thriving, socially just human presence on our beautiful planet Earth. I ask for your vote.

Forty years ago I moved from Chico to the Bay Area for the cool weather and abundant public access to National and local parklands and seashores. Like many residents of Solano County, I came here for affordable housing. The trade-off was a shortage of public access to nature, I assumed was everywhere in the Bay. In 1994, I was smitten by Mare Island’s majestic natural beauty, history and scenic vistas of 7 Bay Area counties, surrounded by the San Pablo Bay, Carquinez Strait and Napa River. In 1996, we teamed together with Sierra Club and others to host the San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival. Our Wildlife and Birding Expo and guided nature and history tours on the Island opened up this wildland to you, along with dozens of guided outings in Solano and surrounding counties. This annual event led us in partnership, to open two wildlands hiking parks open daily to you on Mare Island.

Now, another billionaire threatens our south county anchorage of nature and open space championed for nearly 30 years by Solano Group members. Distressingly, after steadfast grassroots support, Solano Group ExCom has pivoted its decades long backing, away from providing support for our effort to protect endangered species habitat, wetlands, vast oak woodlands and beautiful shorelines on Mare Island, and our Flyway Festival. I am certain you will join me with your vote, to assure continued grassroots support for access and protection of Mare Island open space and continued support of our Flyway Festival, co-founded by Solano Group.

Much of Solano County’s remaining open space is threatened by ill-advised real estate development. A prime example, of course, is the stalled but still pending “California Forever” project. Yet another current example of open space under threat is occurring at the south end of Mare Island in Vallejo; on land presently zoned as “Parks, Recreation, & Open Space” in the Vallejo General Plan; and on land designated as “Open Space” in the City of Vallejo’s “Mare Island Specific Plan.”

The Golf Course site features spectacular views, it’s valuable land for a real estate developer planning to fill the site with high end housing for affluent buyers, those who can afford the view. I submit Mare Island should not lose, nearly half of its present open space, for no reason other than to accommodate the pecuniary interests of a real estate developer.

For the Mare Island developer to achieve its Golf Course site housing ambitions, rezoning is required. Instead of preparing and proposing its own modifications to its General and Mare Island specific plans, it appears the City of Vallejo decided to delegate this essential task to the developer. Which seems a bit like permitting a fox, although with a pious countenance, to take charge of the chicken house! Vigilant Sierra Club oversight is essential in Vallejo, and anywhere else in Solano County, where it appears certain officials may have cozied up to anti-environmental interests.

If you agree, please vote for myself; Gordon McMahon; Joe Feller; Myrna Hayes; and Belinda Seidemann.

My name is Belinda Seidemann and it’s an honor to be running for election to the Executive Committee for Solano County Group. I have been a resident of Solano County for the past twelve years.

Vallejo, Solano’s largest city, requires steady support of a healthy and safe environment for its underserved population. My efforts to assist my community include creating some of the key photographs used in publicizing the fight against the Orem cement plant, writing commentary regarding the closure of The Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve and serving as campaign chair for current Mayor Robert McConnell. I am a member of the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation, in training as a docent.

In September 2023, I initiated a “Stroll In the Park” to introduce Christopher Cabaldon our outstanding candidate for State Senate District 3 to our community and to make him aware of our “urban wildlands” the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve and the adjacent Historic Mare Island Golf Course.

Currently I’ve been working with a group of Vallejo residents planning a response to a developers bid to change the Open Space zoning of the Historic Mare Island Golf Course.

The careful work Joe Feller as past chair of the Solano County Group and the work of Myrna Hayes, creator and producer of the Bay Area Flyway Festival and the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve to foster awareness of our beautiful urban wildlands, and Gordon McMahon an ardent supporter of Open Space inspire my efforts.

My first contact with the Sierra Club was at age 15 when I purchased Starr’s Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra. I still drink from a Sierra Club cup. I live in Vallejo and roam our hills and shorelines.

I have served two years with a special emphasis on affordable housing in accord with the Club’s Housing Policy and Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. The Principles are: Be Inclusive; Organize from the Bottom Up; Let People Speak for Themselves; Work Together in Solidarity and Mutuality; Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves; and Commit to Self-Transformation. I gain Solano Group approval in a collaborative process before advocating publicly for the Club.

I helped the Club’s Highway 37 Working Group’s efforts on equitable tolling, traffic mitigation and wetlands protection. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) responded to the Club’s advocacy and modified its plans, which now include enhancing more than 10,000 acres of threatened San Pablo Bay wetlands.

I have represented the Club before the MTC’s Highway 37 Policy Committee, the California State Housing and Community Development Agency, the Solano County Community Action Partnership, the Solano Working Families Coalition, the Napa-Solano California Jobs First Subregional Table, and the City of Vallejo.

I’m currently working with others on affordable housing within existing city limits, renter protections, and the preservation and extension of the Mare Island Preserve.

I am grateful for the support of Sierra Club Solano members Quinton Crawford, Bonnie Hamilton, James DeKloe, Riitta DeAnda, Marilyn Farley, Duane Kromm, and Princess Washington.

I have been a Sierra Club Member since 2003. I will serve the Sonoma Group and Sierra Club as a whole with as much energy as I can muster.

It has been a long haul serving in various roles for our group and chapter for nearly two decades.

My journey began with an internship for Friends of SMART in 2003 for college credit. I was starting my second career at college with environmental an undergrad and then graduate degree. I reported to Steve at the Environmental Center when we were downtown Santa Rosa (remember)?

There I met Veronica who was the Climate and Energy Chair; she was also running for public office. Somehow, she wrangled me into Co-chairing the committee—we do that a lot. I don’t regret one minute of it. From that time on, I’ve been up to my ears in Sierra Club this and Sierra Club that. Am I whining?

I would if it didn’t seem petty because:

The people I work with for a better tomorrow are tirelessly striving—to enjoy, protect, and advocate for our planet.

We the People of the Sierra Club work tirelessly to hold our leaders accountable. For every small victory we win (e.g., banning gas stations or fossil-gas construction, new funding for quick-build bike/ped fixes, CEQA and public trust lawsuits, etc.) it seems we get forced back a step by exercises of raw power, or increasingly sophisticated greenwashing campaigns. Inertia often arises from well-meaning but outdated thinking. But sometimes accommodationist views find their way inside our own Club committees. This can lead us to take no position on endorsement matters where our policies are clear and our voice should be making a difference. This can be demoralizing, but generational change and climate reckoning are all around us. Even our adversaries know the center cannot hold.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” - Frederick Douglass, 1857

An applied anthropologist and energy consultant, I have worked on organic farming, social justice, energy efficiency, and climate issues for over 40 years. At the state-level, I support the Sierra Club CA Energy & Climate, Agriculture, and Forest Committees. Locally I am active on the Sonoma Group Political and Executive Committees, and liaison to the Redwood Chapter Executive Committee. I am Vice Chair of the City of Sonoma’s Climate Action Commission, serve on the Sonoma County Transportation Authority Citizens Advisory Committee, and was just reappointed to the Regional Climate Protection Authority’s Climate Action Advisory Committee.

I would be honored to continue to serve, and humbly ask for your vote.