If you need something done, ask a busy person.
- Proverb
"But how does he do it all?" people often ask when they get to know Bob Howard, who has been a leader of the New Mexico wilderness movement since the early 1970s. Steve Capra, executive director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, marvels that "there are not enough hours in the day, but somehow Bob has done so much, so well. He's a conservation hero-and a heck of a role model."
The Navy trained Bob in aviation electronics (he builds and programs his own computers). While studying chemical engineering at Washington University, Bob got interested in "the chemical plumbing in the human body," so went on to earn both a medical degree and a PhD in pharmacology. Now retired, he was a pathology professor and directed medical laboratories at the University of New Mexico, where he arrived in 1972 with his wife Phillenore, who has an MBA as well as a PhD in biochemistry.
| "Who benefits from half a century of bipartisan efforts to preserve [wilderness] areas? To my Teddy Roosevelt-style Republican way of thinking, we all do. We earn the blessing of future generations for our restraint in leaving some of New Mexico's still-wild landscape for them to know and enjoy." |
| - Bob Howard; Albuquerque Journal, May 18, 2005 |
The couple, already members of the Sierra Club, became active in its Rio Grande Chapter, each serving as its chairperson. "Because we were working really hard," Bob recalls, "we tried to get out into wilderness any time we could. To me, wilderness represents the purest example of healthy nature. It looks better, feels better, and smells better-and it fits me better - than being inside four walls. Without wilderness, we would have lost some of the most important and highest values of our culture."
Bob is an organization man-he joins them, founds them when new ones are needed, and helps them become more effective in getting things done. Seeing the need to better focus wilderness work across the state, he co-founded the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance in 1997. Bob's leadership is evident in the campaign for the Ojito Wilderness (now nearing final Congressional approval) and in emerging campaigns such as that to protect the beautiful Organ Mountains. Bob is a longtime leader of The Wildlands Project and a fellow of The Rewilding Institute. He served on the national board of the Sierra Club for a decade, including as treasurer, vice president for planning, and vice president for conservation.
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| Photo: Organ Mountains by Ken Stinnett |
Bob has helped hundreds of others get involved in preserving wilderness. "The place to start is to simply go out into the wilderness with someone a little more active," he advises. "Or go to a meeting-but put going to the wilderness on your calendar. Get involved in the action. Lend a hand and see how others do things, mentor style-once you've got even an initial success under your belt, you've learned how to make a difference."
While his own activism might seem daunting, Bob does not call himself an overachiever. "We all have all the time there is; it's all in how you use it. Once I figured out how to do it, conservation work has always felt to me every bit as important as my teaching, research, medical practice, my entrepreneurial businesses, or consulting." It is an attitude he seeks to inspire in others as New Mexico wilderness advocates face the challenge of saving still-unprotected wilderness from the fever for oil and gas drilling.
Bob sagely warns of the greatest danger to citizen activism: "it would be too easy to slip over from being skeptically optimistic to being cynically pessimistic. If conservation leaders slip over into being cynically pessimistic, that brings a downward spiral-for us and for the wilderness."
Click here for more Wilderness Heroes, and to nominate a Hero of your own.
