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December 19 - Bay Area Holiday Party  

All Houston Sierra Club members and their guests are invited to our Holiday Party on December 19 at 6:30pm at the Bay Area Community Center in Clear Lake Park. Please bring a vegetarian side dish: vegetables, fruit, salad, or dessert. The club will provide the main vegetarian dish and the beverages.
Go here for more information.

Vote for your Sierra Club Executive Committees! 

The Lone Star Chapter and Regional Houston Group opened their Executive Committee elections on Saturday, December 1. This year, the Lone Star Chapter and Houston Group will have their ballots on the same form, the Chapter candidates first, and Houston Group candidates following. Look for the email sent from Matt Johnson, Lone Star Communications on Saturday, December 1. That email includes your member ID, to make it easier for you to vote.
Go here for more information.

Houston METRO is currently drafting a new transit plan for the Houston region, called METROnext and a new round of public meetings is expected in early 2019. LINK Houston, a recently established transit advocacy group, has released an Equity in Transit Report - which examines Houston area transit needs from the point of view of providing greater transit equity to communities that need better access to opportunities and services
Go here for more information.

The city of Houston has experienced three 500 year floods in the past three years. In order to better prepare the region for future storms, we must have a greater understanding of Hurricane Harvey’s impact to our health, housing, and quality of life. For example, Houston is home to over a dozen toxic superfund sites. During Harvey, many of these sites were flooded, releasing a range of harmful toxins and materials into surrounding neighborhoods. It’s impossible to measure the true impact of these sorts of instances without information on the experiences of residents in the storm’s aftermath.
Go here for more information.

The Houston Sierra Club is looking for volunteers in several areas, especially Audio-Visual for our meetings. We also need one more person to help with Social Media.
Help to make a difference for the Sierra Club!
Click the link to see new opportunities to help.
Go here for more information.

Houston Sierra Club is a member group of our regional Citizens’ Environmental Coalition (CEC), and we encourage your support of this year’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival on Tour, one of the largest environmental film festivals in North America.
Go here for more information.

Forests in East Texas, across the United States, and in the rest of the World are suffering losses as human actions shrink and put them in peril. One of the key actions that has caused many of these problems is human “forest fragmentation”, also known as “habitat fragmentation” and “habitat subdivision”.
Go here for more information.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, logging in East Texas was like the “Wild West”. There was no regulation and “cut and run” logging, which often severely damaged entire watersheds, streams, riparian zones (streamside areas), caused significant soil erosion, and filled streams, creeks, bayous, and rivers with sediment, was the rule of the day.
Go here for more information.

Did you know that JJ Watt lives with us at our wildlife center on Hammerly Boulevard in Houston? Now you didn’t think I was actually talking about the football player for the Texans, did you? JJ is our bullsnake.
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Sometimes you choose the right day for an outing. On October 27, 2018, the Houston Sierra Club visited Sam Houston National Forest to see wildflowers and enjoy the beauty of native blackland prairies.
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Mother Nature smiled on us. First, there was the beautiful setting. Bates Allen Park, where our group met up on November 17, is located just south of the town of Kendleton and adjacent to one of the units of the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. Located within the Columbia Bottomlands, this stretch of the San Bernard River is designated by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department as an “Ecologically Significant River and Stream Segment.”
Go here for more information.