President John F. Kennedy’s ecological record was driven by his growing environmental advocacy. As a senator in 1959 he cosponsored the Cape Cod National Seashore Bill. Then, running for president in 1960, Kennedy promoted and urged voters to save seashores as wildlife refuges and recreational areas. JFK was an enthusiastic reader of Rachel Carson's Sea Trilogy and created the Buck Island Reef National Monument to protect sea corals in 1961. In 1962 the president cited the importance of "Miss Carson's book Silent Spring" when he appointed a Science Advisory Committee to review the DDT issue. Their 1963 report mushroomed into proposed federal recommendations for the use and regulation of pesticides. It was 1972 before DDT was finally banned.

The passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 also reflected the momentum and support of popular and legislative environmental advocacy that reached a crescendo after the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. On the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, Audubon magazine printed an article entitled Rachel Carson and JFK, an Environmental Tag Team.

This surge of environmental awareness also resulted in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of other critical environmental legislation like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.