He was associated with many different environmental groups including the Last Stand, and the Key Deer Protection Alliance of which he was president at the time of his death.
For much of his adult life he lived between his sailboat, The Troika, and the off-grid solar home he and his second wife Alicia built on No Name Key.
Achieving the ability to directly fulfill what he terms "self needs" and provide total self acceptance for the individual appears as the way towards self-actualization.
If this can happen, then free and candid association with others can occur producing relationships of reciprocity towards greater self-development as opposed to what he sees as superficial relations of mutual admiration.
In this sense, Putney was certainly a humanist and can be likened to Erich Fromm inasmuch as freedom is a central term that must be dealt with positively instead of negatively through attempts at its denial via alienation processes that move responsibility for our lives away from ourselves.