Daniel Bernard Daley Zaleha (born July 19, 1957) is an American environmentalist who served two terms on the national board of directors of the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the Pro ...

. He was nominated by committee and then elected by the national membership in April 2003, and was re-elected in April 2006. From March 2004 to May 2006, he served as the 62nd national vice president of the club. He has been an environmental activist with the Sierra Club and other organizations since 1981. He also serves as Vice President of the Constitutional Law Foundation. Zaleha is a graduate of

California State University, San Bernardino California State University, San Bernardino (Cal State San Bernardino or CSUSB) is a public research university in San Bernardino, California. Founded in 1965, it is part of the California State University system. The main campus sits on in th ...

in 1983, receiving his bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies and Physical Geography. He received his Juris Doctor in 1987 from

Lewis and Clark College Lewis & Clark College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1867 and is situated on the historic M. Lloyd Frank Estate in South Portland's Collins View neighborhood. It is composed of three distinct but adja ...

’s Northwestern School of Law, with a certificate in Environmental and Natural Resource Law. While at Lewis and Clark Law School, Zaleha served as the Executive Director of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

. He received his Master of Arts in Religion at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...

in 2008. His thesis is titled ''“The Only Paradise We Ever Need”: An Investigation into Pantheism's Sacred Geography in the Writings of Edward Abbey, Thomas Berry, and Matthew Fox, and a Preliminary Survey of Signs of Emerging Pantheism in American Culture''. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology & Environmental Studies at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

in 2018. His dissertation is titled ''“A Tale of Two Christianities”: The Religiopolitical Clash Over Climate Change Within America's Dominant Religion''. Zaleha was fired from a Boise firm in 1992 after his employer found out he was a Sierra Club activist. Some of the firm’s clients were polluters, and the firm worried that extractive industry clients would go elsewhere for legal representation if they knew a Sierra Club leader was employed by the firm. In a lawsuit that received coverage from various national media outlets, he sued his former firm for religious discrimination under the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...

, claiming that his Sierra Club activism was religiously mandated by his Unitarian Universalist faith. That suit was eventually settled while on appeal to the Idaho Supreme Court. After being fired, Zaleha took on the criminal and civil defense of various Earth First activists. From 1998 to 2002, he headed the Sierra Club’s national priority campaign to end commercial logging on federal public lands. He also represented various environmental, sporting, and conservation groups in litigation against the

U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's ...

, challenging proposed timber sales in the Intermountain West. Zaleha is also the founding president of the Fund for Christian Ecology, and has received recognition as a lay eco-theologian, primarily for authoring two essays, ''Recovering Christian Pantheism as a Lost Gospel of Creation'' and ''Befriending the Earth'', which are published on the Fund's website.

References

External links

Constitutional Law FoundationFund for Christian Ecology
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zaleha, Bernie 1957 births American environmentalists Sierra Club directors Living people Lewis & Clark Law School alumni California State University, San Bernardino alumni University of Florida alumni