Wilderness Society executive Stewart M. Brandborg dies at 93

Montanan was instrumental in protecting millions of wild acres

Stewart M. Brandborg, a conservation activist and Wilderness Society leader who helped draft and advocate for passage of the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964 that set aside millions of acres of land for protection from human development, died April 14 at his home in Hamilton, Mont. He was 93.

The cause was congestive heart failure and lung disease, said a daughter, Betsy Brandborg.

Brandborg, known as “Brandy,” grew up in Montana and Idaho national forests where his father served as supervisor. As a child, he hunted, fished and hiked in the woods, streams and mountains around his home. He came to Washington in the 1950s to work for the National Wildlife Federation and was soon recruited to the Wilderness Society as assistant executive director to Howard Zahniser, who spent nearly eight years fighting for the Wilderness Act.

Brandborg, at 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds, cut an imposing figure in the halls of Congress, as he helped Zahniser lobby for passage of the bill against powerful timber, mining and grazing interests. He was described in historian James Morton Turner’s 2012 book “The Promise of Wilderness” as “a bear of a man … deep voiced, and devilishly charismatic. He could give a busy taxi cab driver reason to care about wilderness and he could hold the attention of a senator on a street corner.”

“These coming years,” he wrote in 1966, “will test our power to the limit: our ability to communicate the need for preserving wilderness; our depth of conviction and willingness to follow through on our commitments as citizens; and above all our basic faith in the American people, who are moving so fast and crowding so closely, and needing wildness so much more today than ever before.”

During his tenure, more than 70 wilderness areas in 31 states were brought under the Wilderness Act’s protection.