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The guest speaker at the Tigard Rotary Club meeting on February 21st was Michael McCloskey, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Mr. McCloskey recently completed a new book entitled “A Glimpse Into History – What Prominent People Have Said About Nature in Oregon and the Need to Conserve It”. In it, he features the words of over 90 figures who, over the last 200-plus years, shaped Oregon’s values and culture related to its natural resources. Among the prominent people he quoted in his book and talked about to Club members about were Lt. W.R. Broughton, Joel Palmer, H.L. Pittock, Abigail Scott Duniway, Chief Joseph, William Gladstone Steel, John Muir, Samuel Lancaster, Samuel Boardman, Governor Oswald West and several others. He discussed how early explorers and settlers marveled at the beauty, and how some were very concerned about abuses of the land and water even in those very early years of Oregon history. Mr. McCloskey touched on issues such as the spotted owl controversy, the Oregon beach bill, salmon runs, and climate change.

Michael McCloskey grew up in Eugene. After high school, he earned his BA degree from Harvard University, then attended law school at the University of Oregon. Upon earning his law degree in 1961, he was hired as the first field organizer for the Sierra Club, a California-based outdoor club with twenty-five employees.

Traveling throughout the northwest for the Sierra Club, Mr. McCloskey learned about environmental issues and cultivated the practical, grassroots approach that would define his career. As executive director of the Sierra Club from 1969 to 1985, he pushed Congress to enact more than a hundred environmental laws, and built Sierra Club membership from 70,000 to over half a million. He led what became one of the most influential environmental organizations in the world.

Mr. McCloskey continued to serve as the Board Chairman for the Sierra Club for another 13 years after retiring as Executive Director. He remains active on behalf of national environmental issues. Until February 2010, he was a trustee of the Sierra Club Foundation, and for several years he was president of the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs. He is a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas and of the Commission on Environmental Law of the World Conservation Union. Mr. McCloskey received the John Muir Award of the Sierra Club (1979), the Fred Packard Award of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (2003), and the Conservation Award of the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs (2004).

McCloskey was married to Maxine E. McCloskey, a whale and ocean conservationist who died in 2005. He now lives in southwest Portland.