New Generation of Leaders . . .

Will the Harvard or Stanford MBA replace the climbing boot and ice ax as the leadership symbol of the nation’s major environmental organizations? In a sense it is doing so. The environmental movement is undergoing a transition to a new generation of leaders skilled in management, marketing, membership-building, fund-raising and lobbying.

Stepping down are many of the leaders who saw the groups through the big environmental wars of the 1960s and 1970s and into the movement’s maturity in the 1980s. Michael McCloskey of the Sierra Club told Times staff writer Robert A. Jones that he spent most of last year juggling budget figures “and finally realized I did not want to be in this movement to crunch numbers.”

The transition is symbolic of the organizations’ popularity and success combined with the reality of dealing with massive legislative and executive bureaucracies. The Sierra Club doubled its budget in four years to $20 million and has a staff of 200. Other groups like the National Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society have experienced similar growth. The organizations have moved from a narrow agenda focused on wildlife and wilderness conservation into broader issues like toxic waste, global air pollution, energy development and nuclear proliferation.

The groups have developed large Washington staffs capable of going one-on-one with congressional committee staff experts on highly technical issues or with the ability to challenge the statistics of researchers at the Interior Department or the Environmental Protection Agency. One Wilderness Society official said, “The question is whether the organization will be run by well-paid, skillful professionals or whether we will cling to the bleeding-hearts concept.”

Actually, the groups need some of both.

There is no question that some of the old-line conservation figures were not slick managerial types. David Brower comes to mind. Brower created more than his share of controversy as Sierra Club director from 1952 until he was ousted by the board in 1969. He created the Friends of the Earth, only to be booted by that board this summer--although he was reinstated a few weeks later. In the 1960s many Sierra Club officials felt that Brower’s ideas were too global and expansive, but they pointed the way to the future.

And when it comes to fighting the toughest battles Brower has the most potent weapon: outrage.

Dam the Grand Canyon? How dare you! Log the redwoods? Shame! Drill oil in the wilderness? Never!

Brower would rage and fume. When members of Congress in fact did want to build a reservoir into the Grand Canyon, Brower bought full-page ads likening the idea to flooding the Sistine Chapel. Blunt, yes. But effective. The dams were not built.

James G. Watt had the outrage factor on his side during his early days as President Reagan’s secretary of Interior. The environmental groups were stunned into virtual silence and inaction for months. That was a time to fight with climbing boots and ice axes, not ledger sheets and organizational charts.

There will be more such times. The environmental movement must always stand guard at the edge of the nation’s parks and wilderness areas. Pressure to roll them back may never entirely go away.

Managerial expertise is important, yes. But the environmentalists must never lose the ability to be outraged, and outrageous, if necessary. And they must renew their roots in the wilderness from time to time. For, as Brower wrote in 1964, “People who know it can save it. No one else.”