Brower Film

I saw “Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America” a heart stirring documentary on Brower’s fights to protect wild places. He went on to start Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute. He helped pass the Wilderness Act, Redwoods National Park, Cascades NP, Pt.Reyes and Cape Cod National Seashores. He favored action over worry and hope. He opposed compromise, having seen the damming of Glen Canyon after he had explored it and the trading of protection for the Nipomo Sand Dunes for the permission to build the Diablo Nuclear power plant on the seashore. Currently, The BLM was trying to withdraw some land from the Grand Canyon National park, so that it would have open the possibility of building dams there , where Brower and others had stopped them in the 1960s. I went to one of his Fate of the Earth conferences on avoiding nuclear war, and I was motivated to try to get the Sierra Club to oppose programs, such as first strike weapons, that increased the risk of nuclear war. He grew the idea that wild places must be protected for future generations, wildlife, aand for the wild places themselves, not just for human use such as logging, mining, damming, and oil developemnt. GW Bush is trying to overturn this legacy.