Howard Zahniser spent his adult life in the marble halls of Washington DC to protect places untouched by humans, becoming the primary architect of America's national wilderness preservation system. An English major raised beside the Allegheny River, he became a translator of ecosystems, turning scientific needs into the language of federal bureaucracy.

After leading the fight to stop the Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument, Zahniser realized conservation needed a permanent legal shield rather than endless case-by-case battles. He drafted the Wilderness Act and shepherded it through an eight-year, 66-rewrite legislative marathon, dying of heart failure just months before it became law in 1964.

• He worked at the Bureau of Biological Survey, learning the internal workings of federal agencies.
• He edited the Wilderness  ...