Gilbert Gude, 84; Republican congressman advocated for environment

Gilbert Gude, 84, a Republican who championed environmental causes during five terms in the House of Representatives from Maryland, died Thursday of heart failure at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D.C.

“He was conscientious and concerned with the environment at an early time,” former Sen. Joseph D. Tydings, a Maryland Democrat, told the Baltimore Sun. “He was really apolitical and a model legislator.”

Gude was born in Washington and raised in Rockville, Md. He was a sergeant in the Army Medical Department during World War II and earned a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Cornell University and a master’s degree from George Washington University.

Gude introduced measures to improve air quality in Washington and to limit noise pollution around airports. His amendment to the Clean Air Act of 1970 required auto emission tests to be published annually.

He also sponsored the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971, which protected wild mustangs in the rural West. He was alerted to the issue by one of his sons, who told him that hundreds of horses were rounded up by helicopter, killed and sold for dog food.