[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 16]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 22798]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING DR. EDGAR WAYBURN

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LYNN C. WOOLSEY

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, October 6, 2004

  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dr. Edgar Wayburn of 
San Francisco and Marin County, California, on the occasion of the 
recognition of Tomales Bay as a Ramsar site. Designated by the U. S. 
government, the Ramsar Bureau in Switzerland maintains a list of 
Wetlands of International Importance under the Convention on Wetlands. 
Ed Wayburn's support for this nomination was crucial in securing the 
Ramsar listing.
  With a long history of environmental activism, Ed Wayburn has 
promoted understanding of the importance of the land/marine interface 
and, in 1998, successfully nominated Bolinas Lagoon as a Ramsar site, 
the only other such designation in California. Now 97, he has a record 
as one of the most successful environmental leaders in the country. 
Locally, Ed and his late wife Peggy are known for their roles in the 
expansion of Mount Tamalpais State Park and the creation of Pt. Reyes 
National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. 
Nationally, they spent 13 years fighting to protect 104 million acres 
of Alaskan wilderness, an achievement that doubled the size of the 
national park system when President Carter signed the Alaska National 
Interest Conservation Act, which added substantially to six parks, in 
1980.
  A family doctor born in Georgia, Ed Wayburn came to California in 
1927. The natural landscape awed him at the time, and the post-World 
War II boom that saw much of the Bay area paved over turned him into an 
activist. Five times president of the Sierra Club, he worked in a 
different style from his legendary colleague David Brower, the Club's 
executive director during the 1950s and 1960s. Skilled at working 
persistently behind the scenes, Wayburn could negotiate the halls of 
Congress and the offices of Interior Secretaries as comfortably as the 
wilderness trails he loved. In 1995, he won the Albert Schweitzer Prize 
for Humanitarianism, and, in 1999, he won the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom, the Nation's highest civilian award, for his exceptional 
service on behalf of environmental preservation.
  Mr. Speaker, Dr. Edgar Wayburn is principally responsible for saving 
more open space than any other living American. Although not the hiker 
he used to be, he is still awed and inspired by the natural world. 
``Wilderness is enjoyed not only by the young and hardy,'' he says. 
``Sometimes it is simply enough to know it exists--to remember and to 
dream.'' We share the dream of Ed Wayburn for a world in which mankind 
honors and preserves our natural heritage.

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