Russell E.

Train
Russell Errol Train (June 4, 1920 – September 17,
2012) was the second administrator of the Russell Train
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), from
September 1973 to January 1977 and the founder
chairman emeritus of World Wildlife Fund
(WWF).[1][2] As the second head of the EPA under
Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Train
helped place the issue of the environment on the
presidential and national agenda in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, a key period in the environmental
movement. He was a conservative who reached out to
the business community and Republicans. He
promulgated the idea that as the economy of the nation
was growing quickly, public as well as private projects
should consider and evaluate the environmental
impacts of their actions.[3][4] 2nd Administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency
In office
Early life, education, and military September 12, 1973 – January 20, 1977

service President Richard Nixon

Gerald Ford
Train was born on June 4, 1920, in Jamestown, Rhode Deputy John R. Quarles Jr.
Island, but grew up in Washington, D.C. His father Preceded by William Ruckelshaus
was an officer in the United States Navy who was
Succeeded by Douglas M. Costle
frequently away on assignment. The youngest of the
Chair of the Council on Environmental
three sons of Rear Admiral Charles Russell Train and
Quality
the former Errol Cuthbert. His paternal grandfather
In office
was Rear Admiral Charles J. Train, and his great-
January 1, 1970 – September 12, 1973
grandfather Charles R. Train had been a U.S.
Congressman and Massachusetts Attorney General. An President Richard Nixon
ancestor, John Trayne, had emigrated from Scotland to Preceded by Position established
the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. Succeeded by Russell W. Peterson

He was trained in the ways of Washington from an Personal details

early age. His father had an office at the White House, Born Russell Errol Train
where he served as President Herbert Hoover's Naval June 4, 1920
aide. In 1932, Mrs. Hoover invited Mr. Train and his Jamestown, Rhode Island, U.S.
older brothers, Cuthbert and Middleton, to spend the Died September 17, 2012 (aged 92)
night at the White House, where they slept in the Bozman, Maryland, U.S.
Political party Republican
Spouse Aileen Bowdoin Travers
Andrew Jackson bedroom and breakfasted with the Parent Charles R. Train (father)
president and Mrs. Hoover on the portico overlooking
Relatives Charles J. Train (grandfather)
the Ellipse and the Washington Monument. Charles R. Train (great-
grandfather)
"I think what made the greatest impression on me," he
wrote years later, "were the tall glasses of fresh Education Princeton University (AB)
California orange juice. I had never seen anything like Columbia University (LLB)
those large glassfuls before."[1]

Young Russell attended the Potomac School and then the St. Albans School and graduated in 1937. Train
then studied at Princeton University, from where he graduated with an A.B. in politics in 1941 after
completing a 112-page long senior thesis titled "The United States versus Japan: A Study of Sea Power in
the Atlantic."[5] While at Princeton, he was in the United States Army ROTC program and upon
graduation entered the Army as an officer. Train remained in the Army for four years during World War
II, stationed both home and overseas and ending up on Okinawa. He attained the rank of major, before
being discharged in 1946.

Over the following two years Train attended Columbia University Law School, where he took an
accelerated schedule and graduated with an LLB in 1948.

Early career
Early in his career, Train served from 1949 to 1956 as Attorney, Chief Counsel, and Minority Advisor on
various Congressional committees and from 1956 to 1957 as Assistant to the Secretary and Head of the
Legal Advisory Staff for the U.S. Treasury Department.

In 1954, Train married the former Aileen Bowdoin Travers; they became the parents to four children –
Nancy, Emily, Bowdoin and Errol.

He was a judge for the U.S. Tax Court from 1957 to 1965, one of several appointments which went
against a previously observed Senate Resolution prohibiting the appointment to that body of persons
recently employed by the Treasury Department.[6]

World Wildlife Fund

In 1959, Train founded the Wildlife Leadership Foundation in hopes of establishing effective wildlife
parks and reserves. In 1961, he founded the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) to aid Africans in
developing capacity to manage their own wildlife resources. He was chairman of the AWF from 1961 to
1969. He also helped establish the College of African Wildlife Management at Mweka (near Moshi),
Tanzania.[7]

When the World Wildlife Fund (U.S.) was formed in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 1961, Russell
Train became its first ever Vice-President; in later years he was named Chair Emeritus of the WWF. He
was President of The Conservation Foundation from 1965 to 1969. In this role, Train helped to bring the
environment to the American public's consciousness and lobbied for a high-level policy group at the
highest levels of government.
In 1966, Train became a member of the National Water Commission, charged by Congress with
reviewing national water policies.

In 1968, Train was selected to serve as Chairman, Task Force on Environment for U.S. President-elect
Richard M. Nixon. His selection, and the creation of the task force, signals the growing acceptance by the
incoming administration of the "environment" as a public policy concept.[7][4]

Train served as Under Secretary of the Department of the Interior from 1969 to 1970. Between 1970 and
1973 he was Chairman of the newly formed Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

EPA Administrator
During his time as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Train led during the approval
of the catalytic converter to achieve Clean Air Act automobile emission reductions; and the
implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES).

As head of the EPA under Presidents Nixon and Ford, Train is generally credited with helping to place the
issue of the environment on the presidential and national agenda in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a key
period in the environmental movement.[4]

Train opened a dialog on global environmental issues with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin,
marking the birth of modern American environmental diplomacy [8][9] Nixon pursued environmental
diplomacy to garner domestic political support.[10]

Return to World Wildlife Fund

After leaving EPA he served as president of the World Wildlife Fund-U.S. from 1978 to 1985 and as its
chairman from 1985 to 1994. Under his guidance, World Wildlife Fund-US expanded its focus not only
on species-related conservation projects, but also on protecting habitat by establishing national parks and
nature reserves. It also developed innovative financial mechanisms, including the concept of using Third
World debt reduction to protect the global environment. Through these debt-for-nature swaps, WWF
started to convert portions of national debts into funding for conservation, beginning in the mid-eighties.

Through Train's efforts, in 1983 the WWF-administered J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize was
presented to awardees in the White House Rose Garden by President Ronald Reagan. President Reagan
called the Getty Prize "the Nobel Prize for Conservation." Begun in 1974, the Getty Prize originally
honored outstanding contributions to wildlife conservation and now focuses on the education of future
conservationists.

In 1985, Train became chairman of the board of directors of World Wildlife Fund and The Conservation
Foundation and served as chairman until 1994. In this same year, the Conservation Foundation formally
affiliated with WWF. Though the organizations shared the same board of directors as well as some staff,
they remained separate legal entities until their merger in 1990.
During 1988 he also worked as co-chairman of Conservationists for Bush, making reference to George H.
W. Bush, and from 1990 to 1992 as chairman of the National Commission on the Environment.

In September 1994, Train was elected WWF chairman emeritus. That same year, WWF launched the
Russell E. Train Education for Nature (EFN) Program (http://www.worldwildlife.org/efn) to help build
capacity for conservation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America by supporting academic and mid-career
training. To date, EFN has awarded over 1,200 scholarships and training grants totaling 11.3 million since
its establishment.

Train was named chairman of WWF's National Council from 1994 to 2001.

In 2003, Politics, Pollution and Panda: An Environmental Memoir by Russell E. Train was published. A
chronicle of his career, the book is also a history of the birth and growth of U.S. national interest in
environmental issues.

Death
Train died at his farm in Bozman, Maryland, on September 17, 2012, aged 92.[1][11]

Awards and honors

In 1981, Train was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.[12]

In 1991, Train received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of his work in conservation.

In 2001, Train received the 7th Annual Heinz Award Chairman's Medal, 2001,[13] a prestigious prize
honoring individuals who have made extraordinary achievements on issues of importance. Train was
recognized as "a tireless advocate for the cause of the environment since 1961… the architect of an
environmental agenda without parallel in history in its scope…and as a "truly outstanding example of
how a single life can make a difference in the world."[7]

In 2009, a species of gecko, Gekko russelltraini, was named in his honor.[14]

Collector of books, manuscripts, and artwork

Train collected printed books, manuscripts, photographs, maps, artifacts, and artwork on African
exploration, big-game hunting, natural history, and wildlife conservation, dating primarily from the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 2004, the Russell E. Train Africana Collection was acquired by the
Smithsonian Institution Libraries, where it is housed in the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural
History (http://www.sil.si.edu/libraries/cullman/index.cfm%20) in Washington, D.C. The collection
includes correspondence, drafts of publications, diaries, account books, ephemera, posters, news-
clippings, biographies, memoirs, portraits, and the former personal property of selected explorers, big
game hunters, missionaries, pioneers, and naturalists in Africa. The Train Collection is particularly strong
in archival materials on the following topics: the search for the source of the Nile and the progress of
other exploring expeditions in Africa; the collecting of specimens of African animals, plants, and
ethnological materials for zoos and museums (including a significant body of correspondence and
photographs from the Smithsonian African Expedition in 1909-1910, led by President Theodore
Roosevelt); and the growth of the African wildlife conservation movement. Besides Roosevelt, the major
persons represented in the Train Africana Collection include the journalist and explorer Henry Morton
Stanley and members of his Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (Thomas Heazle Parke, Robert H. Nelson,
James S. Jameson, John Rose Troup, William Bonny, William Grant Stairs, Edmund Musgrave Barttelot,
and Arthur J. M. Jephson); the medical missionary Dr. David Livingstone and his father-in-law Robert
Moffat; taxidermist Carl Akeley; zoologist Edmund Heller; hunter Frederick Selous; artist and adventure
writer A. Radclyffe Dugmore; explorers Samuel Baker, Thomas Baines, Richard Francis Burton and E.J.
Glave; anthropologist Paul du Chaillu; and royal traveler Edward VIII (later the Duke of Windsor).[15]

See also
Presidency of Richard Nixon#Environmental policy
Environmental history of the United States

References
1. Juliet Eilperin (September 17, 2012). "Russell E. Train, former EPA head, dies at 92" (https://
www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/russell-e-train-former-epa-head-dies-at-92/2012/0
9/17/3d2c8494-010c-11e2-b257-e1c2b3548a4a_story.html). The Washington Post.
Retrieved 2012-09-18.
2. "Russell E. Train | EPA History | US EPA" (http://www.epa.gov/history/admin/agency/train.ht
m). Epa.gov. 2006-06-28. Retrieved 2010-08-21.
3. Rawlings, Nate. Milestones. Time magazine. October 1, 2012
4. Rinde, Meir (2017). "Richard Nixon and the Rise of American Environmentalism" (https://ww
w.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/richard-nixon-and-the-rise-of-american-environm
entalism). Distillations. 3 (1): 16–29. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
5. Train, Russell Errol (1941). "The United States versus Japan: A Study of Sea Power in the
Atlantic" (http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/handle/88435/dsp016969z260r). {{cite
journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
6. Harold Dubroff and Brant J. Hellwig, The United States Tax Court: An Historical Analysis
(2014), p. 159.
7. "WWF - Who We Are - Russell E. Train Timeline" (http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/russelletr
ain/timeline.html). Worldwildlife.org. Retrieved 2010-08-21.
8. Russell E. Train, "The environmental record of the Nixon administration." Presidential
Studies Quarterly 26.1 (1996): 185-196.
9. J. Brooks Flippen, "Richard Nixon, Russell Train, and the birth of modern American
environmental diplomacy." Diplomatic History 32.4 (2008): 613-638.
10. Stephen Macekura, "The limits of the global community: the Nixon administration and global
environmental politics." Cold War History 11.4 (2011): 489-518.
11. Keith Schneider (September 17, 2012). "Russell E. Train, Conservationist Who Helped
Create the E.P.A., Dies at 92" (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/earth/russell-e-
train-92-dies-helped-create-the-epa.html). New York Times.
12. "Public Welfare Award" (http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_p
wm). National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 18 February 2011.
13. The Heinz Awards, Russell Train profile (http://www.heinzawards.net/recipients/russell-train)
14. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of
Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-
5. ("Russell Train", p. 230).
15. Smithsonian Institution Libraries. "The Russell E. Train Africana Collection, 1663-1996" (htt
p://sova.si.edu/record/SIL-CL.XXXX-0014?q=*&s=20&n=10&f=Archival_Repository%3ASmi
thsonian+Libraries&i=25). Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives.

Further reading
Flippen, J. Brooks. Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of
American Environmentalism (LSU Press, 2006).
Flippen, Brooks. "Richard Nixon, Russell Train, and the birth of modern American
environmental diplomacy." Diplomatic History 32.4 (2008): 613638. online (https://www.jstor.
org/stable/24916003)
Gilmore, Nicholas. "The Republican Who Brought Environmentalism to the White House: As
a Republican EPA administrator, Russell Train centered the environment in American politics
in an era when talk of conservation and regulation was bipartisan." Saturday Evening Post
June 4, 2020 (https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2020/06/russell-train-the-republican-wh
o-brought-environmentalism-to-the-white-house/)
Greenberg, Michael R. "Russell E. Train: a leading environmental figure of the 1970s."
American journal of public health 100.4 (2010): 606. online (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm
c/articles/PMC2836347/)
Houck, Oliver A. "In Memoriam: Russell E. Train." Tulane Environmental Law Journal
(2012): i-iii. online (https://journals.tulane.edu/index.php/elj/article/download/2305/2136)
Macekura, Stephen. "The limits of the global community: the Nixon administration and
global environmental politics." Cold War History 11.4 (2011): 489-518.

Primary sources
Nicoll, Don. "Train, Russell oral history interview." (1999). online (https://scarab.bates.edu/cg
i/viewcontent.cgi?article=1389&context=muskie_oh)
Train, Russell E. "The environmental record of the Nixon administration." Presidential
Studies Quarterly 26.1 (1996): 185-196. online (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27551558)
"Russell E. Train: Oral History Interview" at Environmental Protection Agency (https://www.e
pa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/russell-e-train-oral-history-interview.htmlonline)

External links
Biodiversity Heritage Library (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/12247) scans of
books from the Russell E. Train Africana Collection in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries

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