[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 48 (Thursday, March 25, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING DR. EDGAR WAYBURN

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                          HON. LYNN C. WOOLSEY

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 25, 2010

  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor our mutual friend 
and advocate emeritus for the environment, Dr. Edgar Wayburn, who died 
March 5th in San Francisco after more than a century walking this Earth 
that he so loved.
  ``He has saved more of the wilderness than anyone alive,'' said 
President Clinton in 1999 when he awarded Dr. Wayburn the Presidential 
Medal of Freedom, the Nation's highest civilian honor.
  Born in Macon, Georgia, in 1906, at the age of 21 he trekked to 
California where he followed in John Muir's steps and was awed by the 
magnificence of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada. He returned east to 
earn a medical degree at Harvard, and then in 1933 he moved to San 
Francisco to practice medicine and to fall in love with the sparkling 
waters of the bay and the golden hills surrounding it. In 1939 Ed 
joined the Sierra Club--in order to go on a burro trip, he claimed in 
his memoirs. He never left the organization, serving five terms as 
president, and ultimately honored as the club's Honorary Lifetime 
President.
  Ed served four years in the Air Force during World War II and 
returned to San Francisco in 1946. There on the slopes of Mt. 
Tamalpais, he met his future wife, the stylish Peggy Elliot, an ad 
agency staffer and a former Vogue editor. Together they formed a 
formidable team for conservation, Ed the persistent, quiet spoken 
persuader of the powerful; Peggy, the brilliant wordsmith and 
organizer. And together they raised four children, William, Cynthia, 
Laurie and Diana--whose education included being packed into the family 
station wagon for summer rambles across the vast West.
  Mt. Tamalpais, one of the couple's favorite hiking spots, was also 
the inspiration for Ed's first foray into conservation. With the Bay 
Area sprawling during the post-war boom, he wondered how much longer 
the signature peak of Mann County could remain green and undisturbed. 
Joining with Sierra Club activists and local residents, he began 
buttonholing State legislators and pressed for a series of acquisitions 
that expanded Mt. Tamalpais State Park from 870 acres to 6,300 acres 
over a period of 24 years.
  In the early 60s developers set their sites on the Marin Headlands, 
quiet hills and valleys along the Marin Coast, just 15 minutes from the 
Golden Gate Bridge, a perfect place for a new suburb of the city, 
population 25,000. While local conservationists rallied to stop this 
kind of development in Marin County, Dr. Wayburn headed a movement to 
make the Headlands, along with Alcatraz Island, Muir Woods, the 
Presidio and Ocean Beach into a new national Park. Through his alliance 
with Congressman Phil Burton and his persuasive touch with Nixon 
administration officials, including the President himself, Dr. Wayburn 
was instrumental in establishing a whole new entity, the Golden Gate 
National Recreational Area, an ``urban'' national park.
  During much of the time period, he worked tirelessly to establish the 
GGNRA's spectacular neighbor, the Pt. Reyes National Seashore. Together 
these two jewels have brought into public ownership lands rich in 
forests, meadows, marshes and rocky shores, bursting with wildlife on 
the urban edge of 12 million people.
  In 1968, despite the opposition of much of the timber industry and 
the angry buzzing of chainsaw vigilantes, he convinced Congress to 
establish Redwood National Park in Humboldt County and to double its 
size ten years later.
  He continued his quiet and persistent leadership of the Sierra Club, 
even while conducting a full-time medical practice and teaching at 
Stanford University and UC San Francisco. Then in 1980 after thirteen 
years of an intense lobbying campaign led by Dr. Wayburn, and aided by 
Peggy Wayburn's two books on Alaska wilderness, Congress passed the 
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The legislation added 
104 million acres to our national parks and refuge systems and 
effectively doubled our nation's parkland.
  ``I have loved medicine and conservation,'' he is quoted in the 
Journal of the San Francisco Medical Society. ``In one sense, my 
involvement with both might be summed up in a single word: survival. 
Medicine is concerned with the short term survival of the human 
species, conservation with the long term survival of the human and 
other species as well. We are all related.''
  Several years ago, Madam Speaker, we both joined Dr. Wayburn in a 
small redwood grove in the Presidio of San Francisco as it was being 
dedicated to honor Peggy and Edgar Wayburn. The redwood is a survivor 
of millions of years of evolution, fire, changing climate and the 
chainsaw. It is nature's tallest tree and can live for two thousand 
years. It is fitting that Edgar Wayburn will be remembered among our 
planet's natural wonders.

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