Art Cooley, co-founder of Environmental Defense Fund, dies

WASHINGTON (AP) — Art Cooley, a longtime activist who co-founded the Environmental Defense Fund, has died. Cooley, 87, helped launch the group, now one of the nation’s largest environmental organizations, from his living room on Long Island, New York, in 1967. EDF now has nearly 1,000 employees from New York to London to Beijing. In the mid-1960s, while a high school teacher, Cooley was one of several local activists who organized to stop use of the pesticide DDT, a poison that was threatening the survival of birds including the osprey, bald eagle and peregrine falcon. The legal battle led to the banning of DDT in the United States and the formation of EDF.