Nathaniel Pryor Reed

Nathaniel Reed was among the architects of the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and was instrumental in organizing the first Earth Day. 

On July 3 in Quebec, Mr. Reed fell and struck his head on a rock just  after hooking a 16-pound salmon on one of his favorite rivers, and never regained consciousness. He died eight days later, on July 11, 11  days short of his 85th birthday. 

The New York Times hailed Reed as a “champion of Florida’s environment,” detailing his efforts to prevent a jet port from being built in Big  Cypress Swamp, leading to his work in drafting the Endangered Species Act in 1973. 

Mr. Reed served as an Assistant Interior Secretary from 1971 to 1977  under presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. According to  The Washington Post, he helped preserve millions of acres of wilder ness in Alaska, banned dangerous pesticides and endured death  threats from Western ranchers after he sent federal agents to stop the  widespread killing of federally-protected eagles. 

In 1972, Mr. Reed accompanied Julie Nixon Eisenhower on a tour of  the Everglades, the Post recalled. Two years later, Florida’s Big Cy press National Preserve was established as one of the country’s first  two national preserves. 

Mr. Reed also had roles in the banning of DDT and other chemical  agents dangerous to wildlife and humans. He took steps to preserve  California redwood forests, blocked construction of a jet airport near  Jackson Hole, Wyo., and called for a treaty protecting polar bears from  hunting. 

“I suggest to you that the American dream, based as it is on the concept of unlimited space and resources, has run aground on the natural  limits of the earth,” he wrote in a 1974 essay. “It has foundered on the  shoals of the steadily emerging environmental crisis, a crisis broadly  defined to include not only physical and biographical factors, but the  social consequences that flow from them.”