Howard Clinton Zahniser
Howard Clinton Zahniser was an influential American conservationist born in Franklin, Pennsylvania, and raised in the nearby Great Allegheny Forest. With a background in English rather than the hard sciences, Zahniser was deeply inspired by nature, drawing from the philosophies of American Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau. His professional journey began as a teacher and journalist, eventually leading him to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he served as a media director. In 1945, he joined the Wilderness Society as executive secretary, dedicating himself to the preservation of wilderness areas.
Zahniser is best known for his pivotal role in drafting the Wilderness Act, a groundbreaking piece of legislation aimed at protecting America's natural landscapes. His vision included a coordinated management system for over 3.6 million hectares of wilderness, and he tirelessly advocated for the bill, facing significant opposition from various interests. Despite his declining health, Zahniser's passionate efforts culminated in the eventual passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, shortly before his death. His legacy endures, inspiring generations of environmental activists who view him as a symbol of dedicated and effective conservation efforts.
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Howard Clinton Zahniser
Conservationist
- Born: February 25, 1906
- Birthplace: Franklin, Pennsylvania
- Died: May 5, 1964
- Place of death: Hyattsville, Maryland
Identification: American conservationist and nature writer
Zahniser was an influential figure in the wilderness preservation movement of the mid-twentieth century. In addition to serving as executive secretary of the Wilderness Society for more than twenty years, he authored the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964.
Although born in the town of Franklin in northwestern Pennsylvania, Howard Clinton Zahniser grew up to the east in Forest County, in a remote village nestled against the Great Allegheny Forest. After a childhood spent happily roaming the woods and an adolescence during which he absorbed the manifestos of the American Transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Zahniser was convinced that the truest manifestation of the spiritual dimension of the material universe is the untrammeled wilderness. Not educated in the hard sciences (Zahniser completed an English degree in 1928 at tiny Greenville College in Illinois), he responded to the sheer majesty of nature and was certain that such contact is a necessary boon for a humanity bound to technology and cities.
After a stint as a teacher and then working as a journeyman journalist, Zahniser became a kind of media director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Biological Survey, which later became the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, from 1931 to 1943. His heart was in the wilderness, however; he was an avid camper and hiker and a frequent contributor of articles to a variety of nature magazines. In 1945 he went to work for the Wilderness Society, taking a considerable cut in salary to do so. He served as the organization’s executive secretary for more than twenty years; during most of that time he also edited its quarterly magazine, Living Wilderness.
During the mid-1950’s Zahniser spearheaded efforts to stop the U.S. Department of the Interior’s proposal to build dams in Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado. Encouraged by the success of these efforts but wary of future projects that might damage the delicate ecostructures of undeveloped federally owned land, Zahniser in 1956 drafted a visionary bill designed to safeguard the American wilderness permanently by setting up a system to coordinate the management of the more than 3.6 million hectares (9 million acres) of forests, national parks, and wildlife sanctuaries under congressional jurisdiction (rather than under the jurisdiction of individual federal agencies). The draft was poetic, even lyrical, in its descriptions of the necessity of the wilderness. It was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by John Saylor, a Republican representing Pennsylvania, and in the Senate by Hubert Humphrey, a democrat from Minnesota.
An eight-year battle for the bill’s passage ensued, with objections raised by the National Park Service and the Forest Service, the authority of which would be greatly diminished by the law, as well as by entrenched interests of mining, lumber, and farming. Throughout the frustrations of the process—including sixty-six rewrites of the bill and eighteen congressional hearings—Zahniser emerged as the bill’s most formidable proponent. In passionate congressional testimony and eloquent magazine columns, Zahniser argued that civilization draws its spiritual strength from interaction with pristine nature. With his folksy charisma, Zahniser forged a national coalition of grassroots supporters, politicians, journalists, conservationists, and scientists to ensure the bill’s eventual passage.
Zahniser’s health began to fail during the arduous campaign, and he died of heart failure on May 5, 1964, just months before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law. The members of the generation of environmental activists that emerged during the 1970’s revered Zahniser as a folk hero; for many, his resilient determination to protect the wilderness remains a model of humane and effective activism.
Bibliography
Harvey, Mark W. Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005.
Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. 4th ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Scott, Doug. The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Natural Heritage Through the Wilderness Act. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 2004.
Zahniser, Ed, ed. Where Wilderness Preservation Began: Adirondack Writings of Howard Zahniser. Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1992.