by Richard C. Keating

On my homeward meander from a week of botany teaching in Maine, I stopped in Shepherdstown, WV. There I planned to visit the Burns family. John was a friend from my youthful Boy Scout days in northern Virginia. That evening John and I had dinner with his neighbor, Ed Zahniser. The name rang a bell. Ed had just completed a 36 year career as a writer with the National Park Service, and was an affable dinner companion. Soon I was stunned. Ed is a son of Howard Zahniser, a founder and first executive director of The Wilderness Society.

 Having been a member of that group for half a century I was aware that the society and “Zahnie,” as he was called, was on a short list of genuine legends in the field of American conservation, a list that includes Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olson, and Robert Marshall. As the evening unfolded, I was reminded of the accomplishments that sculpted the structure of American wilderness preservation. 

During his tenure as leader of The Wilderness Society (1945-1964), Howard Zahniser was the architect of the Wilderness Act that he first drafted in 1956. For 9 years, he worked tirelessly with congressional committees, overseeing over 60 revisions of the bill, and attending 18 public hearings. Many call the bill the most artfully worded legislation among all U. S. statutes. In May, 1964, a week after testifying at the final congressional hearing, at age 58, Zahnie died in his sleep. Soon after, the bill passed the senate 73-12 and the house by 373 to 1! The following September, his widow, Alice, witnessed the signing of the act by President Lyndon Johnson in the Rose Garden.

 In the ensuing half century, around 100 bipartisan congressional acts have permanently protected over 110 million acres of natural landscape. The most recent, I think, was designation of the Spanish Peaks Wilderness in Colorado, signed into law by President Clinton on his last day of office. In its designated areas, the Wilderness Act allows no resource extraction or permanent development. It is a place “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

 Two things strike me as especially significant. First, persistence is so important in such leadership. Alice said of Zahnie “He’d just go and go, often 30 hours at a stretch. In the end he just spent himself out.”  It can be said that he gave his life to achieve this goal and we need to be grateful for his sacrifice. Second, I note the window of opportunity when this all took place. Can you imagine our present Congress passing this bill by any margin?

Quote from Johnson, K, and E. Zahniser, (eds.) (2014) Alisonoward. 100 miles on the Allegheny River, 1937. Publisherpawild.org. 75 pp. [A journal of a canoe trip taken by Howard and Alice Zahniser, plus appendices describing the historical events noted above.]