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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 28, 1993                   TAG: 9302280273
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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PULESTON FIRST TO HEAD EDF

As the first chairman of the Environmental Defense Fund, Dennis Puleston helped save the osprey by driving the pesticide DDT off the national market. The EDF was born in 1967 in an attic room in Stony Brook, N.Y., with the motto "Sue the bastards!"

"We were a pretty controversial group in the beginning," said Charles F. Wurster, now 62, a professor of environmental science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He was one of the original 10 EDF members.

"We chose Dennis as the first chairman because he had the dignity - and the gray hair - that the rest of us didn't have."

The Environmental Defense Fund needed a little dignity in those days. One of the group's saltiest affidavits said, "To continue to use DDT against mosquitoes in Suffolk County (N.Y.) would be like using atomic weapons to control criminals in New York City."

Because of the EDF effort, the use of DDT was stopped in New York in 1970, and the insecticide was banned nationwide two years later. The EDF is now celebrating its 25th anniversary with a national membership of 225,000 and a budget of $22 million.

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