Paying Tribute to Environmental Heroes
Teamwork. That’s how wilderness is saved. But teams need leaders, and The Wilderness Society believes in honoring those citizens who have gone above and beyond in their efforts to protect America’s wildlands and wildlife. Over the past year, we have presented the following awards.
U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) received our Ansel Adams Award for lasting contributions to the protection of America’s natural treasures. Jeffords completed a 32-year congressional career by playing a lead roll in passage of a bill protecting 42,000 acres of wilderness in the Green Mountain National Forest. The senator also worked to curb acid rain and to ensure passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act. Boehlert retired, too, after 24 years in Congress. As chairman of the House Science Committee, he often rallied centrist Republicans to buck party leadership and support land conservation. “He fought tenaciously to protect the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling,” said Wilderness Society President William H. Meadows.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management Ranger Shawn Stapleton, 30, won the Olaus and Margaret Murie Award for his wide-ranging efforts to protect lands within Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument that are being evaluated as potential wilderness areas. He created and posted signs that deterred off-road vehicle users from traversing, and thereby damaging, these places. The award goes to a person, often a young land manager, who has shown extraordinary dedication to protecting our natural heritage. It is named for the renowned husband-and-wife team that made enormous contributions to wilderness protection and to the vitality of The Wilderness Society.
Herb Field of the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News was selected as the tenth recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing. “Herb has written countless editorials effectively making the case for protecting wilderness, our national parks and forests, and the Arctic Refuge,” said Meadows.
We presented a lifetime achievement award to Tom Bell, a Wyoming rancher whose increasing concern about public land management policies in the 1960s led him to create the Wyoming Outdoor Council and High Country News. “When Tom Bell sees land or wildlife in trouble, he just can’t help jumping in and trying to set things right,” said Bob Ekey, The Wilderness Society’s regional director in the Northern Rockies.
We honored two West Virginians with Environmental Hero Awards for their steadfast efforts to build support for protecting wilderness in the Monongahela National Forest. Lewisburg Mayor John Manchester and Richwood Mayor Bob Henry Baber believe that preserving these lands is in their communities’ best interests.
Five graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point were awarded Gaylord Nelson Earth Day Fellowships in 2007. Ginamaria Javurek of Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Rainey Kreis of San Pedro, California; Cortney Schaefer of Grand Island, Nebraska; Yu Wang of Kunming, China; and Theresa Ford of Rosedale, Wisconsin were recognized for significant contributions to promoting conservation ethics and environmental education and for exhibiting leadership potential in environmental education. We initiated these annual fellowships in 1990 to honor Earth Day’s founder, former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Gaylord Nelson, long-time counselor of The Wilderness Society, who died in 2005.
