Remembering 5 Time Sierra Club President Dr. Edgar Wayburn

The Sierra Club Board of Directors notes with sadness, honor, and awe the passing of our dear friend and Honorary President Edgar Wayburn on March 5, 2010, at the grand age of 103.



Ed, a five time President of the Sierra Club, represents the best of the Sierra Club culture of volunteer leadership and empowerment. He was an “amateur” conservationist in the best sense of the word – someone who dedicated his life to protecting the environment out of a deep love for the Earth’s wild places and the work necessary to defend them.



Ed joined the Sierra Club in 1939 primarily so he could take a Club-sponsored burro trip into the Sierra Nevada. After serving in World War II, he returned to San Francisco where he married Peggy Elliot and the two started a medical practice, a family, and a joint collaboration of enjoying, exploring, and protecting the Earth’s wild place through the Sierra Club.



For the past 50 years, Ed has been a leader, advocate, diplomat, lobbyist, and inspiration for the Sierra Club. He played a vital role in our campaigns to pass the Wilderness Act, stop dams in the Grand Canyon, expand Mount Tamalpais State Park, establish Point Reyes National Seashore and North Cascades National Park, establish and expand Redwood National Park, and add millions of acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System. His two crowning achievements were the passage of the laws establishing the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.



All told well over 150 million acres of wilderness and parks were protected by Sierra Club campaigns where Ed and Peggy played leadership roles. This achievement was noted by President Bill Clinton in 1999 when he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Ed at the White House, noting: “He has saved more wilderness than any other person alive.” Ed, always looking three chess moves ahead, used the occasion of meeting the President to lobby him on creating a Sequoia National Monument, something the President followed through on in 2000.



Ed’s formula for success was a combination of personal knowledge, tenacity, persuasiveness, and passion. In his courtly but firm way, be would befriend and then lobby presidents, cabinet members, congressmen, mayors, donors, conservation leaders, and Club leaders. Admirers from Bill Clinton, to Philip Burton, to Morris Udall, to Nancy Pelosi to every Sierra Club president that followed him knew that they needed to consult with Ed Wayburn on things he cared about and that they could not say no to him once he got their attention. The Edgar Wayburn Award that the Club bestows on public officials is a recognition of Ed’s efforts to cultivate and honor public service on behalf of the environment. Ed also had a knack for inspiring, befriending, and mentoring new generations of younger activists, leaders, and staff. Upon his death old and young alike testified to how he had changed their lives.



Ed was also a master of patient visionary, incremental, determined environmental progress. He would set a high bar, work hard to achieve success, drive a hard bargain, and in the end cut the best possible deal for the environment. He would then get ready for a follow up campaign to get the next level of protection until his ultimate goal was achieved. A classic example is that after the Alaska Lands Act passed in 1980, it left out protection for the vital Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, and it left large portions of the old growth forests in the Tongass National Forest vulnerable to subsidized logging. Ed promised he would return to right these wrongs. He redoubled his efforts and worked tirelessly through the Sierra Club to head off proposals to exploit the Refuge, and he helped the Club and our allies grant added protections to the Tongass.



Ed recognized that it would be a hollow victory if we succeeded in protecting wilderness and parks in the United States, if the rest of the planet was being destroyed by thoughtless exploitation. He became extremely active in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Wilderness Congress and was given the highest honors by both groups for his leadership, accomplishments, vision, and inspiration. He regularly led the Sierra Club to engage in international fights to save wild places from mining, energy development, logging, roads, and dams. As news of his death spread around the world this month, veterans of these campaign expressed their admiration and appreciation for the huge impact Ed had made on the world conservation stage.



In his final month, Ed was introduced to our new Executive Director Mike Brune and when they discussed our campaign to have President Obama declare the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a national monument and withdraw it from energy development his eyes twinkled. He knew that his Sierra Club would continue the glorious fight that he had dedicated his life to.



We are all honored to have known him and worked with him. We are all committed to carry on his work in the name of the Sierra Club.