Stewart M. Brandborg

Stewart M. Brandborg (February 2, 1925 - April 14, 2018) was an American conservation activist. He studied wildlife technologies at the University of Montana (B.S., 1947) and the University of Idaho (M.S., 1951). Brandborg worked for various environmental organizations, most notably as the director of the Wilderness Society.

Early life and education Stewart Brandborg was born on February 2, 1925, in Lewiston, Idaho. His father, Guy Brandborg, was the assistant to the forest supervisor of the Nez Perce National Forest. The Brandborg family moved to Montana in 1935, where Brandborg would serve as the forest supervisor for the Bitterroot National Forest for twenty years. In 1943, Stewart Brandborg began university studies at Montana State University in Missoula (now called the University of Montana). It was here that Stewart met his future wife, Anna Vee Mather. Brandborg graduated in 1947 with a bachelor's degree in science specializing in wildlife technologies. He and Anna Vee became married in 1949 and would later have five children.

Brandborg conducted pioneering mountain goat research while working for the Montana Department of Fish and Game in the late 1940s. He was a research fellow at the Idaho Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit while studying for his master's degree in Forestry at the University of Idaho in 1949. Upon graduating in 1951, Brandborg conducted research and management investigations on the mountain goat, elk, and other big game species with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, where he worked through 1953. Brandborg advocated for the Wilderness Society to stop a proposal for a Trans-Alaskan pipeline that threatened wilderness and wildlife in Alaska beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although the pipeline was eventually built, the efforts of The Wilderness Society led to greater environmental regulations on the pipeline and the eventual declaration of over 100 million acres of parks, refuges, and wild rivers in Alaska. After departing from The Wilderness Society in 1976, Brandborg worked as a special assistant to the director of The National Park Service until 1981. In this position, Brandborg was responsible for the development of citizen participation programs to foster communication between the National Park Service and local citizens. In 1982, Brandborg became the national coordinator for The Regional Environmental Leadership Conference Series. Brandborg developed training materials and organized regional conferences to train new leaders in the environmental movement. He worked with The Leadership Series until he left Washington to return to Montana in 1986. He continued to work on environmental issues at a more local level from his home in Hamilton, Montana, until his death on April 14, 2018.