Dennis Puleston

Dennis Puleston (30 December 1905 - 8 June 2001) was a British-born American environmentalist, adventurer and designer. He is perhaps best known for playing a key part in securing a nationwide ban in the United States on the use of the pesticide DDT, a decision regarded as the first important success of the emerging environmental movement. As a result of this ban, he helped save his favourite bird, the osprey, from extinction in North America. He was co-founder and the first chairman of the Environmental Defense Fund. Puleston also co-designed the DUKW, an amphibious vehicle used in World War II.

Puleston was born near London, and grew up in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England.His uncle introduced him to his lifelong interest in ornithology and his artist mother encouraged him to draw. He went on to become a talented wildlife artist. From an early age he was interested in boats and sailing. He studied biology and naval architecture at the University of London, followed by an unsatisfying stint working in a bank. In 1931 he and a friend, with scant funds, set off to sea from England in a small sailing boat, across the Atlantic, and spent the next six years sailing around the world. One obituary recorded:

On his travels, he ate human flesh with cannibals in New Guinea, flirted with virgins in Samoa, managed a derelict coconut plantation in the Virgin islands, adopted a pet boa constrictor, tattooed his arm with sharks' teeth, searched for sunken treasure off Santo Domingo, was shipwrecked on Cape Hatteras and gave his pet cockatoo to the Emperor of Japan. Eventually he was captured in China by Japanese soldiers fighting the Sino-Japanese war. When Puleston received a handwritten letter from the Emperor thanking him for the cockatoo, his captors were so impressed that they packed him back to Europe on the Trans-Siberian railway.

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