Environmental titan David Brower dies

David Brower, an oracle for wilderness and the most indomitable environmental warrior of 20th-century America, has died. He was 88.

Mr. Brower, who died Sunday at his home in Berkeley, Calif., of bladder cancer, was a combative, inspirational and visionary figure who led the transformation of an easygoing culture of nature lovers into a hardened army of nature defenders.

He became the first executive director of the Sierra Club, remaking a quiet organization of hikers and picnickers into the nation's leading conservationist group. Later, he founded Friends of the Earth, an even more pugnacious organization. In both groups, his fiery temperament and audacity ultimately led to estrangement but did little to diminish his reputation.

"Judged by his life and his career, he was, in his time, the soul of the movement to save the Earth. He became its flag bearer," said Martin Litton, a fellow crusader for more than five decades. "More than anyone else, including John Muir, he endowed the Sierra Club with greatness. Dave lived in a time when you couldn't just rhapsodize about nature. You had to be hard-headed about it, and he was."

Mr. Brower spearheaded the fight to save the Grand Canyon from dams. He also organized successful opposition to dams that would have flooded Dinosaur National Monument - although paying a price he would always regret: acquiescing to Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River.

He was influential in making nuclear power an issue for environmentalists, and he was among the first to insist that the environment was a matter of global concern.

In the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Brower was instrumental in getting federal approval for the North Cascades National Park in 1972.

"David brought it to national attention," said Bill Arthur, Northwest director for the Sierra Club. "The effort started with small groups and individuals in the Northwest. He came in and helped coalesce them into a national presence."

Mr. Brower's passion spanned multiple generations, Arthur said.

"As a student at Washington State University, I worked on an environmental coalition that brought David to campus - even though he was two or three generations older. He had an amazing capacity to weave specific issues and places into larger, broader battles. He reminded us that it's about helping to understand our place in the world."

Mr. Brower came to prominence 50 years ago, just as America's mood about the outdoors was ready to shift. Ingrained ideas about reclamation and gentleman conservation were yielding to concerns about ecosystems, about the impact of industrialization, about sustainability and human responsibilities to nature.

Born in Berkeley on July 1, 1912, Mr. Brower made his first trip to Yosemite National Park when he was 6. It remained, always, his favorite place. His mother, an avid hiker, lost her sight when he was 8, and he became her guide in the outdoors, learning the words to convey the majesty and emotion of the wild.

Mr. Brower attended the University of California at Berkeley. He was a mountain climber when climbing was still young on the West Coast. He chalked up the first ascent of New Mexico's Shiprock. He joined the Sierra Club in 1933 and, overcoming his fear of crowds, became a leader in the club's Outings Program.

He undertook his first conservation campaign in 1939, riding the lecture circuit throughout California with a silent movie about the high Sierra. He brought a phonograph and played emotional music and narrated the film with his powerful voice, arguing on behalf of what would become Kings Canyon National Park.

Brower served with the 10th Mountain Division in Europe in World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star. He returned as editor of the Sierra Club magazine and launched the club into publication of coffee-table books, beginning with one by his friend Ansel Adams, the renowned photographer.

Under his leadership as executive director from 1952 to 1969, the Sierra Club grew from 2,000 hikers to 78,000 true believers. It now has more than 600,000 members and substantial influence in Washington and state capitals.

In what was perhaps the most important confrontation of his life, he propelled the organization into a fight against damming the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon in 1966. The Internal Revenue Service responded by revoking the Sierra Club's nonprofit tax status - which Mr. Brower leveraged into a wave of public sympathy.

"Backlash from the IRS intervention was probably one of the important factors in staving off the dams," he wrote in his 1990 memoir "For Earth's Sake."

He was forced out of his job as executive director of the Sierra Club in 1969 by board members unhappy that he made major decisions without consulting them. He founded Friends of the Earth, an organization he said was intended to "make the Sierra Club appear reasonable."

He resigned after a battle for control in 1986. In 1982, he established the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute.

John McPhee, who wrote about Mr. Brower in his 1971 book "Encounters with the Archdruid," said Mr. Brower "listened to his own drum."

"He had some arrogance. He was feisty. He was a battler," McPhee said. "He was ministerial in the sense that he had a cause and he was in a pulpit."

Mr. Brower also pushed environmentalists to become more directly involved in politics, said David Ortman, former Washington state director of Friends of the Earth. Mr. Brower was a co-founder of the League of Conservation Voters, which keeps track of congressional votes and publishes annual ratings of federal lawmakers.

Ortman compared Mr. Brower's influence with that of Hazel Wolf, the longtime Audubon Society volunteer who died earlier this year.

"Losing David and Hazel makes it a pretty rough year," Ortman said. "But even archdruids can't live forever."

Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Ross Anderson and The Associated Press is included in this report.