Brandborg recalls effort to pass Wilderness Act 50 years ago

Stewart Brandborg speaks in slow, precise, fully formed paragraphs. “Lots of people never set foot in a wilderness sanctuary, but they like the idea, the concept that somewhere Nature is working her will in the absence of the heavy hand of man,” he explains. “Whether it’s a trip to the zoo, or a heavily used city park, there’s something in the American people, inherited from their grandfathers and grandmothers who were the frontier vanguard that developed this country, for the outdoors. Even if they’ve never had a camping trip, never sampled Nature, they are an alliance of people who speak for unspoiled landscapes, rivers, mountains and deserts.” Brandborg has been shepherding that alliance nearly all his 89 years. He’s one of the last surviving witnesses to the creation of the Wilderness act of 1964, picking up the standard after its drafter, Howard Zahniser, died of a heart attack just weeks before President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law on Sept. 3, 50 years ago. “He was one of the originals who was right there,” said Brock Evans, former top legal representative of the Sierra Club during the Wilderness Act’s birthing and now board member of the Endangered Species Coalition in Washington, D.C. “He was a master of getting grassroots people who actually live in the threatened country together, and bringing them to learn the habitat of Washington. He taught me about the importance of grassroots organizing. From Brandy, I learned how to be a warrior and a fighter.” “Zahniser wrote this bill on an old white tablet with blue lines on his kitchen table,” Brandborg said. “I don’t think the term – I know damned well the term ‘wilderness’ wasn’t in common usage yet. But Zahniser was relentless in keeping attention on the only agency that used the term and that dedicated wilderness lands, because of the insights of a few in the U.S. Forest Service.” Brandborg referred in particular to Bob Marshall, the Forest Service explorer and founder of the Wilderness Society, whom he once met hiking through the West Fork of the Bitterroot River. Marshall died in 1939 at the age of 38. Two years later, The Forest Service set aside 950,000 acres of Montana’s Rocky Mountains in his memory – what’s now the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex...more