Appreciation: Lessons From the Man Who Stopped Grand Canyon Dams
Martin Litton, who died this week, was passionate, combative—and effective.
"If you have to get old, get as old as you can get," Ansel Adams would often say, raising his glass in a toast to this principle. The great outdoorsman Martin Litton, Adams's friend and colleague in nature photography and environmental activism, certainly followed that advice. Litton, one of the last of the pioneers who shaped the modern environmental movement, died on Sunday at 97.
It was Litton who first understood the damage that a Marble Canyon Dam would inflict on Grand Canyon National Park. It was Litton who uncovered U.S. Forest Service mismanagement of the giant sequoias of California. It was Litton who knew which stands of redwoods would make the best Redwood National Park, for he had
