Dear HCN,
In a back-page essay, you
show a photograph of Sen. Gale McGee, William Ruckelshaus, and me:
Nathaniel Reed (HCN, 3/27/00: HCN at 30: ‘On faith alone’). I was
serving as Assistant Secretary of Interior for Fish, Wildlife and
Parks. The story of how the poisoned eagles were located, the
intense investigation that followed, the incredible breakthroughs:
the pilot of the helicopter and light wing aircraft appearing at my
office and confessing, and the use of the then-top secret Blackhawk
reconnaissance aircraft to locate burial pits on the Werner Ranch
that contained hundreds of eagles are all part of a fascinating
story.
Tom Bell did energize me when the U.S.
Attorney for Wyoming refused to bring charges against Herman
Werner, but thanks to the invaluable assistance of Attorney General
Elliott Richardson, we charged Mr. Werner.
Just
before trial he met an unseemly death driving his car off a
cliff.
The eagles that you see us holding were a
last-minute inspiration. Just as I was leaving to testify on the
Hill, I called Dillon Ripley, the secretary of the Smithsonian
Institute, and asked him for stuffed bald and golden eagles. The
samples were at the front door as we dashed by on the way to the
Senate hearing. The photographs of the birds made every newspaper
in America and led to vastly increased fines for killers of eagles.
Walter Cronkite captured the scene by following the Werner case and
another eagle-killing case in Texas.
I came to
Washington with a short agenda of 12 items. On top of the list was
the need to ban the use of Compound 1080 once and for all. I put a
peer review committee together, headed by former Assistant
Secretary Stanley Cain and A. Starker Leopold. My assistant, James
Ruch, staffed the team. They brought in the report that Jim
prepared, with the leadership of EPA and CEQ, that led to the
Presidential Order banning Compound 1080. It is one of the great
environmental achievements of the Nixon
administration.
Nathaniel P.
Reed
Hobe Sound, Florida
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline How we banned Compound 1080.
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