Founder Quits Friends of the Earth, Says Situation ‘Just Got Hopeless’

David R. Brower, who founded Friends of the Earth in 1969, has resigned from the organization’s board of directors, ending a long-simmering dispute over the group’s future.

“It just got hopeless,” Brower said Friday. “I thought I might as well not burden them any further.” Brower, 74, said his resignation took effect Sept. 21.

His decision followed his unsuccessful campaign last May to get members to recall a majority of the group’s board for having cut environmental programs in the face of a $550,000 debt and declining membership, which now is reported to be 17,000. (At one time, the group had about 30,000 members.)

Opposes Relocation

Brower had also unsuccessfully opposed the relocation of the group’s headquarters from San Francisco to Washington, saying that it would lose its direction and its impact as a grass-roots environmental organization.

The recall narrowly lost, by 3% of the votes cast, Brower said. He was removed as chairman but remained on the board.

Brower--who also helped shape the Sierra Club into a major environmental force and still sits on its board of directors--said he will concentrate on building a new environmental organization headquartered in San Francisco known as the Earth Island Institute.

Several former staffers of Friends of the Earth are now associated with the institute on a “deferred salary” basis, Brower said in a telephone interview from his home in Berkeley.

‘Trying to Save Team’

“We’re trying to save the team,” Brower said. He added that the new group’s 1987 budget will be between $150,000 and $200,000 and that it has 3,500 members.

Cynthia Wilson, a one-time assistant to Interior Secretary Cecil D. Andrus in the Carter Administration who became executive director of Friends of the Earth this month, said Friday that the organization’s debt has grown to about $600,000, about half of which is owed to members.

But she said, “I feel like it’s bottomed out. Those people will come back once we’re back actively pursuing programs.” Wilson said that the group’s annual budget is about $1 million and that it has 13 employees. There were about 50 employees in 1982.

The group’s conservation director, Geoff Webb, said the deficit can be attributed to declining revenues caused by membership losses, legal expenses, environmental books that were published but went unsold, moving expenses and the cost of searching for a new executive director.

Fought Against Dams

Brower is best known for leading a campaign to block construction of dams in the Grand Canyon. And he was among those who fought for passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which protected millions of acres from development. He also conceived and edited the Sierra Club’s large “coffee table” books with their dramatic Ansel Adams photographs of the nation’s parks and wilderness areas.

Also resigning from the board on Friday was Herbert Choa Gunther, executive director of a San Francisco public interest advertising agency. Gordon Anderson of Colorado Springs resigned earlier from the Friends of the Earth board and as a paid staff member.