BATON ROUGE (August 23, 2007) – The Louisiana Environmental Action Network will honor seven local activists for their work to on environmental and conservation issues.

BATON ROUGE (August 23, 2007) – The Louisiana Environmental Action Network will honor seven local activists for their work to on environmental and conservation issues.

The seven environmental pioneers will be feted at “Defenders, Heros and Legends,” the 21st annual awards banquet of LEAN, at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 14, at the Sheraton (downtown) Convention Center, Baton Rouge.

“We’ve honored some outstanding individuals in our 21 years and those we have chosen this year have made many sacrifices in fighting for the environment and for a better Louisiana,” says Marylee Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. “These are the people who worked long and hard to make our lives better, and who deserve to be recognized now for their achievements.”

This year’s honorees include the following:

Lorna Bourg, New Iberia, is president and executive director of the Southern Mutual Help Association. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Fannie Mae Foundation James A. Johnson Fellow, and a graduate of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Program for Senior Executives. · During three decades in rural community and housing development, she has provided leadership in local, regional and national nonprofit initiatives. She has extensive experience in community organizing and development.

Barbara Dodds, Covington, La., is a retired librarian and volunteer activist/lobbyist on issues pertaining to public policy, government and the environment. She represents LEAN in Baton Rouge. After joining the League of Women Voters in 1978 Dodds became active in Louisiana environmental issues, becoming embroiled in landfills, recycling, water quality, land use and the whole gamut of issues that we face in this state. She has served on the League of Women Voters Saint Tammany board since 1980.  As a member of the state board of the League of Women Voters of Louisiana from 1989 to 2004 she lobbied League positions for the environment for over 10 years.  Dodds was recognized by the Louisiana Wildlife Federation as Volunteer Conservationist of the year for 1993.

Becky Gillette, Ocean Springs, Miss., is co-chair of the Mississippi Chapter of Sierra Club and has headed up testing of FEMA trailers for formaldehyde for the Sierra Club Gulf Coast Environmental Restoration Task Force. She is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 40 national publications including E, The Environmental Magazine, Omni, BioScience, Biocycle and Organic Gardening. Dodds served as a board member of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation for about 10 years. She won the National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation in 2002 in the area of communications.

Oliver Houck, New Orleans, is a professor at the Tulane University School of Law. He has served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. and as general counsel and vice president of the National Wildlife Federation. He has served on the boards of the Defenders of Wildlife and the Environmental Law Institute, the Litigation Review Board of the Environmental Defense Fund, and two committees of the National Science Foundation. Professor Houck is active in legal proceedings involving wildlife, biological diversity, coastal, and water pollution control problems, and publishes regularly on these and related issues.

Helen Vinton, New Iberia, is assistant executive director/life quality director for the Southern Mutual Help Association. She has more than 25 years if experience in rural community development and directs the SMHA Life Quality Program initiatives including sustainable agriculture and economic alternatives with traditional fishers. · She has served as president of Rural Advancement Foundation—USA and she co-founded the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group.

Kathy R. Wascom, Baton Rouge, served for 15 years as a reference librarian in the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System. She became involved in environmental issues as a founding member of the Citizens for a Clean Environment which was formed to stop the creation of an incinerator. Since then, she has served as president of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation and Chair of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. She has worked on the Baton Rouge celebration of Earth Day for more than 20 years. She has performed legislative work for Citizens for a Clean Environment and LEAN for the past 15 years.

Dean Wilson, Baton Rouge, is your Atchafalaya Basinkeeper. He has worked as a commercial fisherman for 14 years and also has been involved in the ecotourism industry. He has more than 20 years of experience working on behalf of threatened peoples and threatened environments, conducted numerous grassroots organizing campaigns, he has dedicated himself to the protection, preservation and stewardship of the Atchafalaya Basin.

For more information on the 21st annual LEAN conference go here.

CONTACT:
Marylee Orr
Executive Director
Louisiana Environmental Action Network
(225) 205-1438