Stewart Brandborg honored at wilderness celebration

Local wilderness advocate and organizer Stewart “Brandy” Brandborg was the introductory speaker at last week’s St. Paddy’s Day Wilderness Celebration that drew a packed house at the Bedford Building in Hamilton. Keynote speaker Verena Gruber, from the European Wilderness Society, spoke about wilderness in Europe and compared it to what it means in the United States where the modern concept of wilderness was first coined.

The celebration began with a tribute to the introductory speaker himself, billed as “the last surviving architect of the Wilderness Act.” Indeed, Brandy’s name and face are synonymous now with the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and the Congressional Act that established it and all the other wilderness areas in America.

Raised here in the Bitterroot, Brandborg’s father G. M. Brandborg was Supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest for 20 years. As a result, while growing up, Stewart had the opportunity not only to walk in wild country with his dad, but to meet some of the icons in the formation of the concept, including Gifford Pinchot and Bob Marshall.

After embarking on a career as a wildlife biologist and making a name for himself by following a bunch of mountain goats around (and taking notes) in Idaho, Brandborg went to work for the National Wildlife Federation. From there he went to work for the Wilderness Society as an assistant to the director of the Wilderness Society at the time, Howard Zahniser, who was busy drafting what would become the 1964 Wilderness Act. Zahniser died in 1964 before the Wilderness Bill was passed. Brandborg became Executive Director of the Wilderness Society and took up the task where Zahniser left off.

True to character and feisty as ever, Brandborg had a hard time giving up the mic once he got started talking about his passion and his life’s work, wilderness and activism.

“We face schemes that have been on the shelf for the last decade to take advantage of what we own, the public land,” he began. He called the current political situation “difficult” and said the Republican Party with this Congress and President was going to be able to do whatever it wanted.

“Thus far this sad administration has turned them loose on the finest of these places, whether it’s the Yellowstone, the Buffalo Range, or the Keys in Florida, where we own land, where the people of this country own, they are about to take over and develop and it’s about that simple. It isn’t complicated. They are doing it with a massive strategy. Just when? When do we go ahead with these proposals that will destroy forever their capacity to preserve the unique environment, its community of life, plants, animals, all of it? It will be gone,” said Brandborg.

“So that is the background, the foundation of their campaign. It will be launched and implemented to the ultimate of their ability,” he said, “and it is in our ability to stop it and we shall. But it’s going to take a massive effort.”

Brandborg exhorted the audience to get active, to talk to their county commissioners, to button hole their senators and congressmen, to visit, get to know and work with the various agencies involved to see that our public lands and our wild lands will be protected.

“It’s up to you,” he said.

Keynote speaker, Verena Gruber from the European Wilderness Society (EWS), began by awarding Brandborg with an Honorary Membership Certificate for Wilderness Advocate to honor his efforts worldwide.

“Your Wilderness Act did not just set an example in the U.S. It set an example for defining wilderness all over the world,” said Gruber.

As the word spreads, it takes on a little different definition, however, depending on regional and cultural backgrounds. Some European languages don’t even have a word for wilderness. In German, she said, it means something more like a garden, not untouched nature.

“It all comes back to what is natural and what is not natural and what role humans play in nature,” said Gruber.

It was only in 2005 that the term gained power in Europe in a European Parliament resolution calling on the European Union Commission to develop a definition of wilderness and create a map of the last wild areas and enter them into the Wilderness Registry. The mission of the European Wilderness Society is to identify, designate, manage and promote Europe’s last wild rivers, wild coasts, and wild forests and educate the public about its values.

In terms of wilderness, one of the greatest differences between the U.S. and Europe is how much is left. For instance, one single wilderness area in the U.S., the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness, covers 1,345,502 acres while the largest wilderness area in Austria, where the headquarters of the EWS is located, covers only 32,000 acres. That’s about 2.5% of the Bitterroot-Selway acreage. The largest wilderness area in the entire European network is 124,355 acres in size. That’s about 9.3% of the Bitterroot-Selway’s acreage.

Given that so little wilderness actually remains in Europe a big part of the European strategy is called “re-wilding.” Core Zones of wild land are identified and around this a Restoration Zone is designated into which the wilderness can be expanded. This area is surrounded by a Transition Zone to serve as a buffer between the wild land and the surrounding lands.

“Our goal is to create as much wild as possible,” said Gruber. Right now, there are 50 areas designated in 17 countries totaling about 741,000 acres. The objective is to enlarge this to cover one to two million acres by 2020 and 2.5 million acres by 2030.

Although the definitions of wilderness in the U.S. and Europe are very similar in the basic sense of protecting pristine landscapes, the U.S. preserves wilderness for the “future use” of the land by future generations. In Europe, it is preserved for the future “experience” of the land.

This affects the ways in which the land is managed, according to Gruber. In Europe, she said, no activities are permitted in the wild lands except walking. Even camping and camp fires are prohibited. So is any form of commercial activity. So there are no paid outfitting trips.

“It makes you wonder how Europeans get to experience the wilderness. Day hikes, I guess,” said Gruber.

In the U.S. we can camp almost anywhere in the wilderness and make a camp fire following ‘leave no trace’ rules and economic activities are still allowed.

Gruber said there were a lot of threats to existing wilderness areas in Europe including logging, tourism development, hunting and poaching and hydropower developments. But there are also a lot of opportunities for re-wilding. Some direct results can be observed. A lot of animal populations are recovering. Today in Europe, she said, there are an estimated 20,000 wolves, 40,000 golden jackals, 25,000 bears and 10,000 lynx.

Gruber said that awareness of the value of wilderness was growing faster in urban areas of Europe than in the countryside.

Former Bitterrooter and one of the Bitterroot’s first Earth First!-ers, Howie Wolke, also spoke at the celebration, urging folks not to compromise over wilderness, saying, “We have already compromised.” He said even if we save every existing vestige of wild land it will only amount to about 9% of what we once had.