In response to impacts COVID-19 has had on the operations, financial security, and well-being of the women in our extended community, our organization launched the Rachel’s Network Community Resilience Fund in April 2020 to provide small, unrestricted gifts directly to nonprofits and women environmental leaders.
Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen, one of the country’s leading environmental lawyers, has joined Rachel’s Network as a liaison. As head of the nation’s premier public interest environmental law organization, Abigail leads a staff of over 400, with more than 130 lawyers, in fourteen offices across the country. She has litigated many precedent-setting cases that have held polluters accountable and cleared the way for clean energy nationally.
Member Mary Bookwalter is funding a number of dam removals in her home state of Indiana both as an individual and through the Indiana Forest Alliance as a donor and volunteer. Most recently, she helped decommission the Collamer Dam on the Eel River. Mary spoke with us about how she got involved in these projects and what’s next.
The American Chemistry Council has identified $36 billion in potential petrochemical and plastic manufacturing investments in the Ohio River Valley and corporations have already begun building ethane cracker plants, pipelines, storage facilities, and other dirty infrastructure. Rachel’s Network is partnering with the People Over Petro Coalition to fight back.
The outreach and programming that zoos provide is critical in the face of declining endangered species, environmental regulation rollbacks, habitat destruction, and climate change. Olga Donahue who serves on the Board of Governors of the Denver Zoo explains what they do to protect wildlife and habitats around the world.
In 2019, Tompkins Conservation donated one million acres to Chile to help establish 10 million acres of new national parks in the country. Rachel’s Network traveled to Chile earlier this year to meet Tompkins Conservation staff, including president and co-founder Kristine Tompkins, and visit two of the new parks – Pumalín and Patagonia. The trip left an impression on members who subsequently provided a grant to Tompkins to support their continued conservation work.
