Sylvia Brockner, 1919-2021, In Memoriam
Sylvia Brockner, author, long-time nature columnist for the Canyon Courier, co-founder of the Mountain Area Land Trust and the Evergreen Audubon Society, passed away on September 3rd, 2021, just shy of her 102nd birthday.
An Evergreen resident since 1965, she and her husband Bill, who pre-deceased her in 2008, founded the Evergreen Naturalists, which eventually became Evergreen Audubon. She was instrumental in founding the Evergreen Nature Center and in assisting Jeffco Open Space when they acquired the 319 acres of land that became Lair O’the Bear Open Space park. She was a founding member of Mountain Area Land Trust in 1992 and fought to ensure that the wetlands north of the Evergreen Lake House weren’t destroyed when the building was constructed in 1993.
Sylvia was an avid writer, authoring a weekly column on birds, flowers, and the natural areas around Evergreen for the Canyon Courier for 45 years. She also authored two books on bird life and nature in the Colorado Mountains. The first one, published on January 1, 1974, titled Birds in Our Evergreen World: A Layman’s Guide to the Mountain Area, is still available in paperback at Amazon. The second book, Mountain Birds of Colorado: A Layman’s Guide to Birdwatching in Colorado’s Mountain Areas, published in 2017(?), doesn’t seem to be available from any online vendor at the time this article was written.
There is a video interview of Sylvia, done to celebrate her 100th birthday, available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/CVmxrc842mc
It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to this pioneer of conservation and environmentalism.
