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15 
‘There's God's Plenty For 
A Politician-Conservationist 
To Do in Washington.’ 
EDITOR’S NOTE: At the 1971 annual meeting of the National Audubon Society 
in Milwaukee in May—which drew nearly a thousand registrants—there were 
fistfuls of speeches, discussions, debates, exhibits to see, and field trips to 
attend. 
From among the major addresses to the membership by Society President 
Elvis Stahr, EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus, Interior. Secretary Rogers 
Morton, and Congressmen Henry S. Reuss (Wis.) and John Saylor (Pa.), few 
could pick the one either most arresting or searing. Each speaker and his speech 
were, in fact, gems. 
But the series of remarks which seemed—to this listener at least—to 
possess a meaningful simplicity and an extra dimension of universality came 
from Mr. Reuss, the Wisconsin congressman. His presentation is, therefore, 
recorded here. 
“IT welcome you to the greening 
of Wisconsin. We still have green 
woods and clean waters, wiidlife 
and wilderness, thrifty farms and 
lovely vistas. And as a result of 
the magnificent gift of the Uihlein 
family, spurred by the Audubon 
Society’s magnificent Mrs. Dorothy 
Vallier, the 185-acre Nine Mile 
Farm right in Milwaukee will be 
saved forever as a nature center. 
You have helped us to keep what 
we have, and you deserve to share 
Init, 
“That’s what you’ve been doing, 
I gather, during your field trips 
cver the last day or two. You’ve 
been seeing some of my old haunts. 
At the Dells, you observed how 
the sandstone gorge has been able 
— so far just barely — to resist 
the neon lights and the flashing 
billboards of commercial expoita- 
tion. At the Kettle Moraine — now 
perserved by Congress in the Ice 
Age National Scientific Reserve, 
thanks in large measure to the 
help of the Audubon Society — 
you saw the kames and eskers and 
drulins rescued in the nick of time 
— D. W. B. 
from the sand and gravel outfit 
that was fixing to haul them away 
to build the latest super-highway. 
And at our magic Horicon marsh, 
you saw what a paradise for the 
egret, the heron, the Canada goose, 
the red-winged blackbird was res- 
urrected when the wetlands drain- 
age crowd was beaten back by the 
conservationalists. 
“Growing up as I did in the 
Kettle Moraine and the Horicon, 
when I got to Congress back in 
1955, I simply had to become a 
conservationalist-legislator. In fact, 
one of my early political oppon- 
ents, noting that I had sponsored 
a law to preserve the Menominee 
Indian’s forest, and a couple more 
to protect threatened wildlife 
species, snorted contemptuously 
that my legislative record was ‘one 
for the Indians, two for the birds!’ 
“T didn’t then, and I don’t now, 
apologize to this dastardly charge 
of being soft on the birds. In fact, 
there have been several quite 
stout-hearted ornithologists in the 
political life of the Republic — 
back through FDR at Hyde Park, 
