[no subject]

During his time at Audubon, Mr. Pough wrote a 1945 New Yorker article
that warned about devastation from the pesticide DDT, years before
Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring brought the issue to wide
national attention.

''If DDT should ever be used widely and without care, we would have a
country without freshwater fish, serpents, frogs and most of the birds
we have now,'' he wrote.

In 1950, Mr. Pough became founding president of the Nature Conservancy,
one of the nation's largest environmental organizations. He later
helped develop the World Wildlife Fund.

In his book The Audubon Ark, a history of the National Audubon Society,
Frank Graham Jr. wrote that Mr. Pough ''practically invented the
land-preservation business in this country.''

''He was an entrepreneur for conservation,'' said Nancy Keeler,
spokeswoman for Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. ''He saw something that needed
to be done, and he did it.''

His son Tristram said Thursday that his father's passion for
environmental causes never abated.

''He was a warm soul, gentle--until you wanted to get a bulldozer out
and wreck a beautiful piece of land,'' he said.

Mr. Pough, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native, retired from full-time
conservation work at age 80. Besides his son, he is survived by two
daughters-in-law, two grandchildren and two brothers.