Joe Browder

Joe Bartles Browder (April 10, 1938, Amarillo – September 18, 2016, Fairhaven) was an American environmental lobbyist, activist, and consultant whose efforts were primarily focused on issues in South Florida, particularly in the Everglades. He worked with many environmentalists throughout his career, most notably Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Nathaniel Reed. He is credited with being instrumental to the founding of the Biscayne National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve (1974), and for stopping the construction of the Big Cypress Jetport and an oil port and refinery in Biscayne Bay. The Browders moved frequently; by age 14, Joe Browder had lived in Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Miami, Arizona, and Colorado before the family returned to Amarillo.

Following his service in World War II, Edward Browder became a white collar criminal; He served 18 months in prison for supplying navy bombers to Nicaraguans intending to bomb Caracas. and again in 1960 for selling stolen securities, the latter of which he claimed to have received as payment for supplying Fidel Castro's rebels with guns and ammunition leading up to the 1952 Cuban coup d'état. He was eventually sentenced to 25 years at McNeil Island for securities fraud around 1969. Browder's name appears in several CIA documents, particularly in reports requested by G. Robert Blakey, though his role in the agency is not disclosed.

Joe Browder attended Cornell University to study ornithology for one semester before dropping out to get married. He was briefly a policeman, protecting it from being developed into an oil port and refinery. The directive also stopped the diversion of water from the Everglades. Douglas described Browder as the "hardest working" activist in the crusade against the refinery. Browder penned a congressional bill to make Big Cypress a national preserve; this was co-sponsored by Lawton Chiles in the Senate and Dante Fascell in the House. Browder testified at congressional hearings Eliot Cutler described Browder as "one of the five best environmental lobbiests [sic] I ran into on the hill... He is terribly effective in terms of getting to people with the kind of information they need when they need it." In 1971, Browder also helped convince Nixon to stop construction on the Cross Florida Barge Canal.

In 1976, Browder was appointed to the environmental task force on Jimmy Carter's transition team under Jack Watson. However, Browder left in mid-November after the election due to policy disagreements among the team. He returned to Carter's staff in 1977 as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Interior. In 1981, he and his wife Louise Dunlap started the environmental consulting firm Dunlap & Browder. In 2015, he helped establish the Franklin Point State Park there, protecting it even further. David Houghton, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association at the time of Browder's death in 2016, wrote that the “Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park and Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area are testament to his profound passion and dedication.”

Browder served as the National Audubon Society southeastern US representative from 1968 He also sat on the advisory board of the InterAmerican Water Resources Network

Personal life Browder dropped out of Cornell University to return to Amarillo and marry his high school sweetheart, environmental scientist Joan Arrington.

Browder had diabetes.