[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 6022]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1445
                       TRIBUTE TO DR. TED STILES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. McCollum of Minnesota). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOLT. Madam Speaker, I rise to mark the passing this week of one 
of the most effective environmentalists in the State of New Jersey, 
indeed in the country, Dr. Ted Stiles. Perhaps not the most celebrated, 
he should be celebrated. He preserved thousands of acres, advanced the 
understanding of ecology, and improved the environment for millions of 
people for generations to come. To some of my colleagues from the 
western States, thousands of acres may not sound like much, but the 
significance of that preservation and the difficulty of doing it in the 
densely populated Northeast are great.
  Dr. Stiles chaired and led boards of the Stony Brook Millstone 
Watershed Association, the Mercer County Open Space Preservation Board, 
the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space, the Municipal Land Use 
Center, the New Jersey Academy of Science, and the Hutchinson Memorial 
Forest. He served for many years on boards, including the Crossroads of 
the American Revolution Association; The Nature Conservancy, New Jersey 
chapter; and others. He continued all of this work through his illness 
and up to his death.
  He showed creative approaches to locally based environmental 
decision-making, such as his creation of the Municipal Land Use Center; 
and he received awards from academia and regional and community 
organizations and the highest environmental award from the Governor of 
New Jersey.
  What distinguished Dr. Stiles especially was his unparalleled, 
unmatched ability to make people want to do those things that 
contribute to the general good. He made landowners want to offer their 
land to preservation organizations, and he made people want to spend 
their money to purchase and preserve that land. He made volunteer board 
members want to give of their time and effort to build communities and 
to improve the environment.
  He made grad students want to go to remote places around the world to 
do such things as measuring the size of fruits relative to the sizes of 
birds' beaks so we could better understand the relationship between 
communities of plants and communities of animals.
  He made hundreds of local citizens want to spend a day twice a year 
cleaning up their town. And he made a politically interested scientist 
want to leave a research career to run for Congress. Yes, I am that 
scientist. Dr. Stiles' research students continue to make contributions 
to research, teaching, and public policy around the country.
  Throughout his life, it is not an empty cliche to say, Dr. Stiles, 
through goodwill and good ideas and leadership, made this country a 
better place.

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