Kingsbury Browne Jr., an attorney and conservationist who roamed the Arctic every summer for 30 years, spent his life working to preserve open space across the country for future generations.
"He was an imposing, but not ostentatious, figure who inspired a lot of people with his vision that disparate conservation groups could become a powerful movement and make a difference," said Jean Hocker of Alexandria, Va., former president of the Land Trust Alliance.
Mr. Browne, who was a founder of the Land Trust Alliance, died of pneumonia Nov. 11 in Kennebunk, Maine. He was 82.
A tax specialist and a partner of the Boston law firm Hill & Barlow until his retirement in 1992, Mr. Browne visited more than a dozen land trusts out West while on a sabbatical from the firm in 1980, during which he served a fellowship with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge.
"He had been providing some tax services to land trusts in the Northeast and he came out West to visit other conservation groups and found the same interests and same needs," said Hocker, who was organizing the Jackson Hole Land Trust in Wyoming at the time.
Mr. Kingsbury then convened a meeting in Cambridge that resulted in the founding of the Land Trust Exchange in 1982. The Exchange, later renamed the Land Trust Alliance, now provides assistance to more than 1,500 land trusts nationally and has been instrumental in the preservation of about 9 million acres of land.
Mr. Browne was an outgoing man who was legal counsel to the Land Trust Alliance for more than a decade. "He was intellectually curious and erudite and able to talk to anybody about anything," Hocker said.
Mr. Browne never said he provided legal advice or legal direction to land trusts. "He said he was providing their legal care," Hocker said.
Born in Brookline, Mass., Mr. Browne graduated from Harvard College in 1944 and Harvard Law School in 1950.
He was a former resident of Gurnet Point in Duxbury, Mass., where he reached his home by four-wheel beach buggy.
For 30 years, he spent each summer in the Arctic, traveling for pleasure and archaeological investigation in a single-engine float plane.
"His father was a well-known salmon fisherman on the Miramichi River and his family had a long love of the outdoors. I think he found a lot of sustenance and spiritual connection in the Arctic," said his son, Mark of Mexico City.
In addition to his son, survivors include his wife, Annette (Upson); three daughters, Annette of Fort Myers, Fla., Juliet T. of Portland, Maine, and Gabriella R. of North Andover, Mass.; two sons, Kingsbury III of Golden, Colo., and Christopher U. of Fairfax, Va.; a brother, David of Plympton, Mass.; and six grandchildren.
