Gloria Flora

Gloria Flora is founder and Director of Sustainable Obtainable Solutions, an organization dedicated to the sustainability of public lands and of the plants, animals and communities that depend on them. In her 22-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, Gloria became nationally known for her leadership in ecosystem management and for her courageous principled stands: as supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in north-central Montana, she made a landmark decision to prohibit natural gas leasing along the 356,000-acre Rocky Mountain Front.

Gloria recently co-authored a report on how Montana can become energy self-reliant through renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation. She serves on the Montana Climate Change Advisory Committee and works throughout the U.S. with the Center for Climate Strategies in assisting states develop climate change action plans. Her work has been featured in national magazines, books, radio, television and documentaries, including NOW with Bill Moyers and in Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change feature film, The 11th Hour.

Fracking the Commons: Why Your Public Lands Are Under Assault by Oil and Gas Drilling

In the early 2000s, fracking was mostly confined to the Southwest and seemed little more than a crazy, expensive, last-ditch effort to squeeze the last bits of gas out of old fields.

August 9, 2013

Backing the Front

When Gloria Flora took the helm of Lewis & Clark National Forest in Montana in 1995, she found priceless wildlands threatened by oil and gas speculators. Defying convention, she declared the area off-limits to oil and gas development, adding a definitive new twist to the interplay between community groups, the fossil fuel industry,and the government that is playing out in surprising ways.

August 6, 2013

Society

Culture and behavior: Remapping relationships: Humans in nature

The ability to create artificial environments (air conditioning, heating, lighting) and chemically alter natural materials (processed food, plastic) perhaps gives the illusion that humans are capable of meeting their needs with minimal imputs from nature. The flawed logic suggests that if humans are only tangentially dependent on the natural world, functioning ecosystems lose importance.

February 9, 2011

Leave a Comment