Hoping to galvanize the environmental movement in the
United States, one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in
the world began five years ago to give money directly to the
country’s best and brightest conservationists. It’s the Pew
Charitable Trust’s Pew Scholars Program, which so far has doled out
50 grants of $150,000 to people from a variety of disciplines such
as ecology, economics, philosophy and law. Recent scholars include
Theo Colborn, a scientist at the World Wildife Fund who educates
the public about the use of chemicals and their health effects, and
Reed Noss, a conservation biologist and founder of the Wildlands
Project. Noss is currently working to protect the biologically rich
Klamath region of southern Oregon and northern California.
Potential Pew scholars must be nominated and 10 are selected each
year. This year, the nominating board has been reshaped to remove
the institutional nominators and include 40 independent nominators.
To find out more about the program, write to the Pew Scholars
Program in Conservation and the Environment, School of Natural
Resources and Environment, 430 East University, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1115
(313/936-2556).
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline How to nominate an environmental innovator.
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