Newswise — Environmental progress has not always been popular or without controversy. This Wednesday, the New England Aquarium will honor two men who have been willing to challenge the environmental status quo and in turn have changed the way we live and think. Canadian scientist and broadcaster David Suzuki and environmental attorney Peter Shelley will receive the David B. Stone Awards for distinguished service to the environment and the community. This award is given biannually and is named in honor of the Aquarium's principal founder Boston businessman David B. Stone.
Both men will be honored in a ceremony Wednesday night at the Boston Harbor Hotel. They will also be among the featured panelists in a forum on global climate change Wednesday from 2:00 to 4:30p.m. at the Aquarium's Exploration Center on Central Wharf in Boston.
DAVID SUZUKIOver thirty years of award winning broadcasting, David Suzuki has been explaining the complexities of science to the public in an accessible and easily understood manner. He is known in over thirty countries as host of The Nature of Things, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation popular science television series which is approaching twenty-five years on the air. The prominent geneticist turned full time environmental advocate has brought his brilliant and acerbic interpretive skills to radio, newspapers, books, and television specials.
Suzuki's PBS series, The Secret of Life, and his five part series The Brain for the Discovery Channel have won international acclaim. His eight part series, A Planet for the Taking, was seen on average by 1.8 million viewers for each episode and won a United Nations Environment Program Medal. That series coupled with his radio program It's a Matter of Survival marked Suzuki's consistent insistence on the public taking a strong advocacy position on protecting a planet under increasing assault. Suzuki has characterized the current environmental condition as: "We're all in a great big car driving at a brick wall at 100 mph, and everybody is arguing about where they want to sit" .
Suzuki is the author of over thirty books including the most widely used genetics text in the world as well as Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature.
Born in Vancouver in 1936, Suzuki and his family like all Japanese-Canadians and Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forcibly sent to an internment camp during World War II. Incarcerated in a remote valley in the Canadian Rockies, Suzuki found that the experience both cultivated his love of nature and forged his ongoing commitment to fight injustice.
Suzuki graduated with honors from Amherst College in Massachusetts with a BA in biology in 1958. He finished a PhD in genetics at the University of Chicago in 1961.
His subsequent research led to the discovery that some mutations could be temperature sensitive. Genes that were normal at one temperature could become abnormal and even lethal in environments a few degrees cooler or warmer. This work became an early indicator of the potential ramifications of global warming on species survival.
Suzuki's greatest contribution has been as a popularizer and interpreter of science, particularly nature. His work belongs alongside that of Jacques Cousteau and Sir David Attenborough, both previous recipients of the New England Aquarium's David B. Stone Award.
PETER SHELLEYFrom the clean-up of Boston Harbor to the effort to end pollution at the Massachusetts Military Reservation and on to the ongoing struggle to rebuild New England's once fabled fisheries, Peter Shelley has been one of the principal attorneys forcing government agencies to comply with their own environmental laws.
Shelley is currently Vice President of the Conservation Law Foundation, New England's foremost environmental advocacy organization, and director of its advocacy center in the state of Maine. CLF's advocates use law, economics, and science to design and implement strategies that conserve natural resources, protect public health, and promote vital communities in the region.
Since 1983, Shelley has litigated cases on a wide range of marine, land, and freshwater resource issues. His current areas of concentration include marine protected areas, fisheries management reform, estuary habitat protection and restoration, coastal sprawl, and the public trust doctrine. As a senior attorney, Shelley led CLF's legal team on such prominent cases as the 1983 Boston harbor clean-up litigation and the landmark 1991 lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service for failure to prevent the overfishing of cod, haddock, and flounder in New England waters.
In 1996, he was awarded a prestigious, three year Pew Fellowship in Conservation and the Environment. The focus of Shelley's fellowship was exploring ways to enhance local management of Maine and New England's threatened fishing industry. Shelley stated then, "The Gulf of Maine ecosystems and the fisheries it supports needs management that works for the region's ecology, economy, and communities" . He studied organizational systems in which fishermen and other marine resource users would share with the government the responsibility of ensuring that fisheries remain healthy and abundant over the long term.
Shelley has also sits on several boards including the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, Restore America's Estuaries, and the National Fisheries Conservation Center. He has also taught marine law and environmental law clinics at the University of Maine Law School.
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