Thursday, September 20, 2012

Russell Train, one of the founders of the World Heritage Program, dies




Russell Train, an American conservationist who helped craft some of the nation's early and enduring environmental laws, has died. He was 92. As the second administrator of the EPA, Train helped create such landmark environmental laws as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act.

I quote from the UNESCO Director General's tribute to Mr. Train:

During a long and illustrious career in the public and private sectors, Mr Train’s occupied several key positions under several US administrations including President of the Conservation Foundation, Under-Secretary of the Department of the Interior, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and President and Chair of the World Wildlife Fund from 1978 to 1990. 
Mr Train is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the World Heritage Convention. In 1965 Russell Train co-spearheaded a drive for an international convention to protect both cultural and natural heritage, with a White House Conference calling for a World Heritage Trust to stimulate international cooperation to protect “the world’s superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world citizenry”.  From 1970 to 1973, Russell Train was the first chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in the Executive Office of US President Richard Nixon, at the time when the World Heritage initiative was launched in a Presidential message in 1971.

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