Brandborg, longtime leader of Wilderness Society, dies at 93

Stewart M. Brandborg, a conservation activist and Wilderness Society leader who helped draft 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 assisted in dozens of drafts and revisions as it wound its way through the legislative process, working out compromises that set the path for a House victory with only one dissenting vote.

Zahniser died just months before President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act, which created what Smithsonian magazine called the first time “land was set-aside for the specific purpose of protecting it from the reach of mankind.”

Brandborg had succeeded Zahniser and remained at the helm of the society for the next 12 years, seeking to bolster the act by obtaining wilderness recommendations from federal agencies.