Wilderness pioneer Stuart Brandborg dies

Wilderness advocate Stuart Brandborg of Hamilton died April 15. He was 93.

In the early 1960s, Brandborg worked under Howard Zahniser, the executive director of the Wilderness Society, on the original Wilderness Act.

“He (Zahniser) wrote the first draft of the bill on a tablet at his dining room table,” Brandborg recalled in a 2014 interview with the Hungry Horse News.

The Society worked tirelessly to get the bill passed and then to add areas to it. Under the law, each wilderness area had to get the approval of Congress.

“I gave my life to it,” Brandborg said.

Zahniser died in May of 1964. President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law in September of that year. Brandborg was elected to fill Zahniser’s role at a critical time for the Wilderness Act and the conservation movement. The Act laid out a 10-year time frame for securing wilderness recommendations from federal agencies. The Act laid out a 10-year time frame for securing wilderness recommendations from federal agencies. It fell to Brandborg to push for review, positive recommendations by federal agencies and congressional approval of wilderness designations for dozens of areas in the national forests and wilderness-quality lands in the national parks and wildlife refuges.

He led the organization from 1964 to 1976.

During his tenure as executive director at The Wilderness Society, Congress approved more than 70 new wilderness areas in 31 states.

Brandborg, in an editorial in 2014, raised worry about the recreation industry ruining wilderness.

“Now it is increasingly made even more pervasive by the profitable industry and expanding self interests of recreation. Humility is too often replaced by a sense of entitlement and selfishness. We are seeing accelerated loss of wilderness as well as the erosion of selfless values and actions that set the stage for wilderness designation. The ascendancy of recreation, an optional pastime, even when at the expense of wildness is a sad comment on the state of American values,” he said.

Brandborg chastised current wilderness advocacy efforts.

“We’re doing a pretty poor job,” he said. “The wilderness movement better revitalize itself.”