BROWER BATTLED TO THE
END
FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
by Mike Taugher
STAFF WRITER
THE BERKELEY VOICE - Community
Newspaper of Berkeley
November 10, 2000
David Brower, one of the most influential
figures in American environmentalism, died in his longtime Berkeley home
Sunday of complications from cancer. He was 88.
Contentious, controversial, bold and stubborn, Brower transformed the Sierra
Club from a band of mountaineering enthusiasts in the 1950s into a political
force.
Along the way he led a campaign to keep dams out of the Grand Canyon, asking
in newspaper advertisements, "Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so
tourists can get nearer the ceiling?"
He helped popularize the photography of Ansel Adams, which he knew would build
support for saving beautiful places, and was instrumental in the formation of
nine national parks and seashores. Brower helped lobby for the Wilderness Act
of 1964 and created or helped create several national environmental
organizations.
He was once fired by the Sierra Club and acrimoniously resigned twice from its
board of directors. In his final split with the club in May, Brower
complained, "The world is burning and all I hear from them is the music
of violins."
Three times, he was nominated for the Novel Peace Prize.
"It's definitely the end of an era," said Seth Adams, land
conservation director for Save Mount Diablo.
"He created the professional environmental movement," said Adams,
who moved to the East Bay in his early 20s in large part to intern at one of
Brower's organizations. "He planted the seedlings and inspired so many
people in so many different directions."
Even in his final weeks, Brower continued to push for new environmental causes
and was busy following up on old ones. This summer, he blasted management at
Yosemite National Park and in recent weeks he criticized plans for a new Bay
Bridge span.
"He had the most dynamic and creative ideas of anybody that I know. He
could sell an idea faster than anybody," said Jean Sirl, a board member
of the East Bay Regional Park District whose husband was president of the
Sierra Club when the group fired Brower in 1969.
"He saved the Grand Canyon. He saved the Cascades. He saved the
redwoods," she said. "He saved everything."
Born the son of a University of California professor in 1912, Brower was
awkward and shy as a youth and sought solace in the mountains. He grew
intimately familiar with the Sierra Nevada and later in life impressed others
with his ability to find his way around the vast mountain chain.
He grew into an accomplished mountain climber who was the first to scale
several impressive peaks, including the daunting Shiprock in New Mexico.
That love of the outdoors translated into enthusiasm for preservation. And it
was dams that he hated most.
Learning from John Muir's failure to save Hetch Hetchy from San Francisco,
Brower saw Los Angeles' quest for water in the 1930s as a threat to the Kings
River in mountainous redwood country.
He filmed the beauty of Kings Canyon to show to residents in Fresno, where he
hoped to drum up support for the establishment of a national park.
The strategy worked, and Brower became a champion of using cameras to bring
his deep love of nature into people's homes, through coffee-table books,
full-page newspaper advertisements and other media.
In the late 1950s, he led the fight against a dam that would have flooded
Dinosaur National Monument in Northern Utah. Brower and the Sierra Club won
that fight, but in victory he would also taste a bitter defeat.
To save Dinosaur, Brower agreed to not oppose Glen Canyon Dam, which today
backs up Lake Powell.
He later expressed his regrets with a Sierra Club book commemorating the
drowned canyon called, "The Place No One Knows."
Brower would later lead the Sierra Club in the epic 1960s fight over whether
dams should be built in the Grand Canyon. The environmentalists marshaled
statistics to make their point that the dam would not save any water and took
their case to the public.
When federal water managers argued that the lake would allow boaters to see
the canyon's walls better, Brower responded with the full-page advertisement
invoking the image of flooding the Sistine Chapel.
Plans for Grand Canyon dams were pulled in 1967. It was a show of new
environmental muscle.
As a result of that victory, however, the Sierra Club lost tax-exempt status
for attempting to influence legislation.
Two years later, Brower, who had pretty much done what he wanted without
submitting to the club's board of directors, was fired.
During his tenure, the Sierra Club's membership grew from 2,000 to 77,000.
Today, membership stands at 600,000.
Brower was hardly silenced by being fired, though.
Within months, he had founded Friends of the Earth and was on his way to
helping with the formation of the League of Conservation Voters.
He formed the Earth Island Institute in 1982.
Although his health had been failing for years, Brower remained at the
forefront of environmental issues until his death.
Transportation, world trade, Yosemite, population, air pollution and an effort
to dismantle the Glen Dam were all issues he was pushing forward when he died.
Brower is survived by his wife Anne; four children, Kenneth, Robert, Barbara
and John; and three grandchildren.
__________
Taugher, Mike. "Brower Battled to the End For the
Environment." The Berkeley Voice.
2000. pp. 1 & 12.
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