David Brower

On november 5, 2000, the greatest force ever known in conservation, environmentalism, and the fight for the earth, was stilled. David Ross Brower, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club and founder of Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, and Earth Island Institute—fondly called the Archdruid—died in his home in Berkeley, California. He was 88 years-old.
Few who work in the outdoors or have followed the environmental movement are unaware of Brower. His exploits, battles, and numerous victories form the basis for much of today's fight for the preservation of things wild. The list is too long to begin in this short tribute—in fact, his two large autobiographical volumes, For Earth's Sake, and Work in Progress, merely scratch the surface.
Brower was born and raised an outdoor enthusiast, visiting the High Sierra often as a child with his family and blind mother. He became a prominent rock climber, logging dozens of first ascents in the Sierra and throughout the West. In 1939 Brower led the first team to summit New Mexico's Shiprock. During World War II Brower put his alpine experience to use in Tenth Mountain Division in the Alps.
Although a lifelong devotee of wilderness, Brower's role as its leading defender did not begin until he was 40 years-old, when he took the job as first Executive Director of the once docile Sierra Club. Brower soon entered the battle against the Echo Park Dam, which the Bureau of Reclamation claimed was instrumental to the Colorado River Storage Project (crsp). Yet it would flood part of a National Monument, something Brower, the Sierra Club, and a large consortium of national organizations held inviolate. Against the advice of his own advisors, Brower took on the evaporation figures of the Bureau's engineers with what he called his own “eighth grade arithmetic”—and won.
Yet in the horse trading leading up to Congressional approval of the crsp, Echo Park was saved but Glen Canyon was lost—something Brower flagellated himself about for the rest of his life. “I was lazy,” he said. “I should have called a special meeting of the Sierra Club Board of Directors and insisted we not cave in. Instead, I obeyed their telegram to capitulate and had a drink at the Cosmos Club. After the vote, Senator Douglas asked me why we gave in. He said we had enough votes to defeat the entire crsp.”

The loss of Glen Canyon helped steel Brower's “No Compromise” stance on many later issues. In the 1960s Brower took on the Bureau again. This time they meant to build two dams in Grand Canyon. As Brower made headway in the fight, the Bureau offered to compromise by removing one dam from the project. Brower rebuffed, calling it just one bullet through the heart instead of two. When the Bureau boasted of the improved access to Grand Canyon the reservoirs would provide, Brower crafted full-page advertisements that ran in newspapers nationwide, asking if we should also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists could get nearer to the ceiling. Although the fight was not Brower's alone—Martin Litton, whom Brower called “my conscience” played a pivotal role as did many others—Brower's leadership was key in defeating the dams.
Brower's style and tactics were often controversial, so much so that the Sierra Club finally ousted him. Not one to weep, he founded Friends of the Earth, who also later ousted him for his quixotic campaigns. Yet Brower marched on.
One of the keys to Brower's effectiveness was his optimism. He never believed all was lost—there was always hope. In later years he pushed what he called Global cpr: Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration. It is no longer enough to try to stop the rate at which things were being destroyed, he said. It is time to turn the tide and begin restoring those things lost. Chief among those was Glen Canyon, whose restoration he was still making bold strides toward when he died.
Brower was not a hand-wringer. He was an enthusiastic defender of what he believed in, and could bring an entire auditorium to laughter and then to tears with his hard-hitting oratory. With his passing, the cause of the earth has suffered a devastating loss. Yet it is not a time to wring our own hands. It is time to roll up our sleeves and step boldly into the shoes that no one man or woman will ever fill again. It is a time to, as Brower often wrote next to his signature in books,
“Persevere!”
Brad Dimock