Arthur has worked on wetland issues, local, state and federal, for the last thirty years. During that time he was Conservation Chair, President, and Executive Director for 12 years, of the Golden Gate Audubon Society.
He was the Program Coordinator for the Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge for five years, during which time he worked on federal legislation to expand the boundaries of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge by approximately 20,000 acres. This legislation which was introduced by Congressman Don Edwards, was passed and signed into law by President Reagan.
In the 1990s he was a founding member of the Campaign to Save California Wetlands, a statewide wetlands advocacy organization created to rebut the Gingrich Congress’ attack on the Clean Water Act. The Campaign had as members over 160 environmental, recreational and environmental justice organizations. The Campaign played a critical role in preventing any weakening of the Clean Water Act.
He was a participant in Governor Wilson’s Wetlands Consensus group. He was also an active member of both the Management and Wetlands Committees of the San Francisco Estuary Project (under the EPA’s Estuary program) from its inception and continues as an Implementation Committee board member. Arthur helped develop the SFEP’s latest, 2022, Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan (called the “Estuary Blueprint”) and worked to ensure that the Blueprint emphasizes, among many other issues, wetland preservation and expansion
Arthur was Chairman of the National Audubon Society’s National Wetlands Campaign Advisory Committee.
Arthur has helped draft several pieces of state legislation that has resulted in greater protection for wildlife in San Francisco Bay and attention to wetlands by State Resource Agencies.
Arthur was awarded a Clean Water Network’s 30-Year Heroes Award celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act and received a Bay Champion Award from the National Audubon Society. In 2017 he was awarded the “Estuary Legacy Award” from the San Francisco Estuary.
Arthur served as Chairperson of the national Association of Joint Venture Management Boards and is past Chair of, and still a board member of, the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture. Joint Ventures are collaborative, regional partnerships, under the auspices of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, of government agencies, non-profit organizations, corporations, tribes, and individuals that conserves habitat for priority bird species, other wildlife, and people-JVs have raised billions of dollars and saved and preserved millions of habitat acres over the last twenty years.
Arthur has been a member of San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club’s Executive Committee for many years and now chairs the Club’s baywide Sea Level Rise Committee and its Bay Alive Campaign.