Joseph Weller Penfold was born on November 18, 1907 in Marinette, Marinette County, Wisconsin, United States. He was the son of the Reverend Frederick Spies Penfold, an Episcopal clergyman, and Ethel Stanton Frisby. His mother, an acquaintance of forester and politician Gifford Pinchot, instilled a love and respect for nature in her son very early in his life. Little is actually known about Penfold's early years, even by members of his own family.
Joseph Weller Penfold studied at the Hope Street High School in Providence and at the Donaldson School in Ilchester, Maryland, before entering Yale in 1926. While at Yale he studied history and rowed crew each year, leaving in February 1930 to travel around the world on a tramp steamer.
Before World War II, Joseph Weller Penfold worked in farming and logging, served in the merchant marine, supervised a federal relief program in Tennessee, and was the conservation director of the National Youth Administration in Ohio. During World War II, he served as an executive officer for the Office of Price Administration in Denver, Colo. Following the war he worked as a field representative for the United Nations Regional Relief Agency in China. Penfold's career in conservation, which spanned two decades, began in 1949 when he became the western representative of the Izaak Walton League of America in Denver.
From 1957 until his death Joseph Weller Penfold served as conservation director of the Izaak Walton League in Washington, D. C. His work primarily involved public relations and education, and he focused on promoting sound resource management at federal, state, and local levels. He also conceived legislation, enacted by Congress in 1958, that created the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. He was later appointed to serve on this commission (led by Laurence S. Rockefeller), which studied, inventoried, and evaluated the nation's outdoor recreation resources and projected trends in population and habits to project future needs.
Joseph Weller Penfold felt this work was needed to address the threats of a spiraling population and a steadily mounting number of outdoor recreationists to the country's steadily diminishing natural reserves. The work of this commission led to the creation of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Wilderness Act, the Recreation Advisory Council, and the President's Advisory Committee on Recreation and Beauty. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy each cited Penfold for his efforts.
Joseph Weller Penfold served as an officer of the National Resources Council of America: as secretary from 1957 to 1965, vice-president in 1966, and chair from 1967 to 1969. He advised the Department of the Interior in the development of the National Fisheries Center and Aquarium and was a member of the master plan team for Yellowstone and Teton National Parks and of the Interior Department Scientific Task Force. He also chaired the Citizen's Committee for the Outdoor Recreation Resource Review Commission and the Task Force committee that drafted the "National Parks for the Future" report. In 1962 Penfold was elected to the Izaak Walton League's Hall of Fame.
Joseph Weller Penfold died on May 25, 1973.
Joseph Weller Penfold was a member of the Sierra Club, of the Wilderness Society, of the American Fisheries Society, of the Wildlife Society, of the Outdoor Writers Association.
Joseph Weller Penfold was very private and quiet man.
In 1936, Joseph Weller Penfold married Lady Halliday of Gallipolis, Ohio, who already had two small daughters. They had two children.
