"David Brower has been for many years a steady force of nature, drawing us to see the natural world as nurturer, teacher, inspirer, and partner.  [He has] been the pathbreaker,  not given to easy answers or ruinous compromises... a man of great insight who cares deeply for his world." 

 --PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER 

 

David Ross Brower was born in Berkeley, California on July 1, 1912.  He is the founder and Chairman of Earth Island Institute and President of Earth Island Action Group and has been leading conservation battles since 1938. 

Mr. Brower joined the Sierra Club in 1933, became a member of its board of directors in 1941, and served as the organization's  first executive director from 1952 to 1969.  In those 17 years he saw the Sierra Club's membership grow from 2,000 to 77,000, and successfully urged the formation of the Sierra Club Foundation (in 1960), before leaving the club staff on request in 1969.  He was re-elected to the Sierra Club board again in 1983, 1986, 1995 and in 1998.    
    
In 1969 he founded Friends of the Earth, where he created the League of Conservation Voters, and initiated the founding of independent FOE organizations in several countries.  FOE now has branches in sixty-six countries.   

Through the years, David Brower has had a profound impact on the state of America's wild lands by helping to create national parks and seashores in Kings Canyon, the North Cascades, the Redwoods, Great Basin, Alaska, Cape Cod, Fire Island, and Point Reyes; and in protecting primeval forests in the Olympic National Park, and wilderness on San Gorgonio.  He played a major role in keeping dams out of Dinosaur National Monument, the Yukon, and the Grand Canyon, in establishing the National Wilderness Preservation System, the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (which resulted in the Land and Water Conservation Fund), and in raising the twin questions: 
            
What kinds of growth must we have?  

What kinds can we no longer afford? 

Earth Island Institute, Brower Fund, and biennial Fate and Hope of the
Earth Conferences, all of which Mr. Brower founded in 1982, are working to bring peace, environmental,  social justice, and other groups together to achieve peace on and with the Earth.  In the fall of 1994,  he co-founded the Ecological Council of the Americas as a network of organizations in the Americas focused on problems of environment and economic integration.  Mr. Brower is advocating for the creation of a National Biosphere Reserve System, as well as that of a National Land Service to replace the current Bureau of Land Management. Together these initiatives put forward a mission of protecting and restoring both public and private lands in the United States.  
 
Mr. Brower serves as an advisor to Interface, Inc., a $1.3 billion multinational flooring and textiles corporation dedicated to being the world's first restorative business.   
 
 
 

In April 1995, Harper Collins released Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run , a book about Mr. Brower's views on the global environmental crisis, co-written by David Brower and Steve Chapple.  Pioneering the age of tree-free publishing  Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run , is printed on kenaf paper ( an annual crop).  A revised edition is being reissued in time for Earth Day 2000.  His autobiography is in two volumes, For Earth's Sake: The Life and Times of David Brower and Work In Progress.  These books are available only through Earth Island Institute.  A video documentary on Mr. Brower's life, For Earth's Sake,  produced by John de Graaf of Seattle's KCTS received national distribution in 1991, a recent updated version of this video A Conversation with Scott Simon, aired on PBS stations nationally in the spring of 1997. 

Mr. Brower edited and designed or found co-publishers for more than fifty books each for the Sierra Club and for Friends of the Earth.  His publishing includes the twenty books in the club's exhibit-format series and the ten in FOE's series, the Earth's Wild Places.  "In Wildness is the Preservation of the World" (Sierra Club, 1962) was judged one of the ten most beautiful books in the world (Leipzig International Book Fair, 1963).  Mr. Brower's recent book projects include The Case Against Free Trade, and Clearcut both published by Earth Island Press.  

Mr. Brower chaired the biennial conferences on the Fate of the Earth (New York, 1982, Washington D.C., 1984), and has served as honorary president of the Ottawa Conference (1986), and the Managua Conference (1989).  He co-chaired the Dialogue on Economic Conversion at the World Assembly on Peace and Life, Against Nuclear War (Prague, 1983) and was a presenter at the Global Forum (1992) and World Congress on Adventure Travel and Ecotourism (1992).  Most recently he co-founded, with David Foster of the United Steelworkers of America, the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment to promote colaboration between the labor and environmental movements.  
    
In  October, 1998, David Brower was awarded the Blue Planet Prize  for his environmental accomplishments.  The Blue Planet Prize is awarded annually by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan and is the richest environmental prize in the world. 

David Brower has been  nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times (in 1978, 1979 and again in 1998-jointly with Professor Paul Ehrlich).       

Comments about his efforts have ranged widely.  John McPhee's Encounters With the Archdruid is about Mr. Brower and three of his natural enemies - and is in its twenty-seventh printing.   Mr. Brower especially likes what Russell Train said when he was chairman of the council on Environmental Quality in the Nixon administration:  "Thank God for Dave Brower; he makes it so easy for the rest of us to appear reasonable."   

Thursday,  May 25th, 2000 
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David Brower and Doug Bevington on the Campaign to End Commercial Logging and the current state of California forests 

7:45pm. UC Davis. Room 1100, Social Sciences.  Doug will be discussing the steps to forming an effective Committee in this area for helping to end commercial logging. Info: 530-753-2102.