ABSTRACT
The traditional requirement for standing-that the plaintiff show some specific injury-made many environmentalists’ suits impossible. For many years, environmental or aesthetic harms were simply not recognized as the sort of harms that could be remedied in court. The temptation of many environmentalists would be to let the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, or the Audubon Society decide when forests need protection and what form that protection should take. Representatives of the Sierra Club, who favor maintaining Mineral King largely in its present state, followed the progress of recreational planning for the valley with the close attention and increasing dismay. The injury alleged by the Sierra Club will be incurred entirely by reason of the change in the uses to which Mineral King will be put, and the attendant change in the aesthetics and ecology of the area.
