One of the most dynamic conservationists of the twentieth century. Howard Zahniser was the lobbyist responsible for the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which protected 104 million acres of public land as wilderness and established the National Wilderness Preservation System. Zahniser was the Executive Director of the Wilderness Society and editor of its magazine "Living Wilderness" from 1945 until his death in 1964. He worked on 66 drafts of the Wilderness Bill and steered it through 18 Congressional hearings. It was Howard Zahniser's sheer persistence and unrelenting determination to protect federal land from exploitation and commercial development which led President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the bill into law at the Rose Garden of the White House on September 3, 1964, four months after Zahnie's death. Howard Zahniser was quoted as saying, "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Despite failing health during the last few years of his life, Zahniser labored feverishly with the final drafts of the Act before it finally became the law of the land. Howard Zahniser will always be remembered as the chief architect of the Wilderness Act. He died of a heart attack at age 58 in May, 1964.
One of the most dynamic conservationists of the twentieth century. Howard Zahniser was the lobbyist responsible for the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which protected 104 million acres of public land as wilderness and established the National Wilderness Preservation System. Zahniser was the Executive Director of the Wilderness Society and editor of its magazine "Living Wilderness" from 1945 until his death in 1964. He worked on 66 drafts of the Wilderness Bill and steered it through 18 Congressional hearings. It was Howard Zahniser's sheer persistence and unrelenting determination to protect federal land from exploitation and commercial development which led President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the bill into law at the Rose Garden of the White House on September 3, 1964, four months after Zahnie's death. Howard Zahniser was quoted as saying, "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Despite failing health during the last few years of his life, Zahniser labored feverishly with the final drafts of the Act before it finally became the law of the land. Howard Zahniser will always be remembered as the chief architect of the Wilderness Act. He died of a heart attack at age 58 in May, 1964.
Bio by: Loren
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