Michael Allan McIntosh, founder of ClientEarth and The Boat Co., died May 7 in Washington, D.C. He was 81.
Born on Nov. 18, 1933, he was raised in New York City. His family owned the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) grocery stores, and when he was 18, he spent a summer working on A&P fishing boats in Alaska. He returned home to attend Haverford College but had to delay starting school until the mid-semester while he recovered from a serious head injury he had suffered in a car accident. He started college but left after not becoming engaged with college life. Instead, he worked as a roughneck and derrick handler for a family oil company.
In the mid-1960s, he established distributorships for A&P products in the Middle East. In 1967, he married Winsome Dunn and they moved to Palm Beach in the mid-1970s. In 1971, Mike became the director of the McIntosh Foundation after severing ties between the Hartford Foundation and A&P. In that position, he helped to grow its assets from about $5 million to more than $40 million. The foundation also awarded more than 1,200 grants to support the work of non-profit groups.
Until his death, Mr. McIntosh served as a founder and director of ClientEarth, the first public interest law firm for the environment established in Europe. In addition, he founded and ran The Boat Co. for over 30 years. The eco-touring nonprofit company is designed to give a wilderness experience in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska.
In the 1970s, through the McIntosh Foundation he funded the establishment of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (now Earth Justice) office in Juneau to challenge a pulp mill Champion Plywood was about to build in Berners Bay. The company had already obtained a 50-year timber contract from the Forest Service. The timber was to come from Admiralty Island. Sitka conservationist said Admiralty Island and the Juneau area would be very different places now without Mike’s ultimately successful effort.
From 1985 to 1990, Mike supported the efforts of Southeast Alaskans to push the Tongass Timber Reform Act through Congress. His support enabled many ordinary Alaskans to travel to Washington to testify on the legislation and visit House and Senate offices to tell their personal experiences about the impacts of logging being done by the Sitka and Ketchikan pulp mills under their 50-year contracts. This support was pivotal, given the Alaska congressional delegation’s strong opposition to the TTRA bill.
In recent years Mike and The Boat Company have supported the Cape Decision Lighthouse; engaged directly in trying to constrain halibut bycatch by the trawl fishery; and continued to support and have engaged directly in continuing efforts to protect vital Tongass wildlife habitat from logging.
Among Mike’s numerous awards was the Chamber of Commerce of Palm Beach community service award; Founder of Justice Award from the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice; recognition from the University of Florida Levin College of Law for founding the Center for Government Responsibility and recognition of his role in the initial Executive Impoundment Project, which successfully won the landmark Supreme Court case declaring impoundment of Congressional mandated funding for education unconstitutional during the Nixon Administration.
He served on many boards including the Urban League of Palm Beach County. His past board memberships also include the Medgar Evers Fund, National Audubon Society, the National Commission on Superfund, The Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council and Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund. He has also served on the boards of Physicians for Peace, Southern Legal Counsel and Florida State University Foundation.
