FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y. Jerry Jenkins, who has devoted much of his life
to understanding the biology, geography and natural history of the region,
received the Adirondack Museum’s Harold K. Hochschild Award on August 4,
2011.
The award was presented on behalf of the museum’s Board of Trustees at a
ceremony held at the Blue Mountain Lake, New York campus.
The program was filled with tributes to Jenkins from friends and colleagues.
Speakers included: Michael Lombardi, Interim Director of the Adirondack
Museum; Nancy R. Keet, Trustee and Chairwoman of the Hochschild Award
Committee; Sheafe Satterthwaite, Lecturer in Art, Landscape History, and
Urban Planning at Williams College; George Wilson; Cali Brooks, Executive
Director, Adirondack Community Trust; Robert Worth, Honorary Trustee,
Adirondack Museum; Timothy Barnett, Vice President, Adirondack Nature
Conservancy; and Stephanie Ratcliffe, Executive Director, The Wild Center.
The Harold K. Hochschild Award is dedicated to the memory of the museum’s
founder, whose passion for the Adirondacks, its people, and environment
inspired the creation of the Adirondack Museum. Since 1990 the museum has
presented the award to a wide range of intellectual and community leaders
throughout the Adirondack Park, highlighting their contributions to the
region’s culture and quality of life.
Jerry Jenkins is an ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s
Adirondack Program (WCS). An accomplished botanist, naturalist and
geographer, he has almost forty years of field experience working in the
Northern Forest. Over the course of his career, his work has included
conducting biological inventories for The Adirondack Chapter of the Nature
Conservancy, surveying rare plant occurrences for the State of Vermont,
chronicling the environmental history of acid rain with the Adirondack Lakes
Survey Corporation, and understanding and interpreting historical changes to
boreal lowland areas in the Adirondacks with WCS. His enthusiasm for natural
history has also led him to study plant diversity and distribution across
various forest types – from the Champlain Hills to large working forest
easements, and from old growth forests to high elevation alpine communities.
His most recent and notable accomplishments with the Wildlife Conservation
Society are his collection of Adirondack publications. Together with Andy
Keal, Jerry Jenkins co-authored The Adirondack Atlas a Geographic Portrait
of the Adirondack Park, perhaps the most significant Adirondack book in a
generation. Some 300 pages in length, the Adirondack Atlas contains 750
maps and graphics, and represents the most comprehensive collection of
regional data brought together in a single source. The park’s geology, flora
and fauna are featured, as well as the history and the dynamic nature of the
park’s human communities. Bill McKibben describes the atlas as a “great
gift…that marks a coming of age.”
In his newest book Climate Change in the Adirondacks the Path to
Sustainability, Jenkins demonstrates how climate change is already shifting
the region’s culture, biology and economy, and provides a road map towards a
more responsible and sustainable future. He provides the first
comprehensive look at both the impacts of, and the potential solutions to,
climate change across the Adirondack region. This compilation, along with
his other regional contributions, prompted Bill McKibben to offer that
“Jerry Jenkins has emerged as the information source for our mountains…and
we are all in his debt.”
The Adirondack Museum, accredited by the American Association of Museums,
tells stories of the people – past and present — who have lived, worked,
and played in the unique place that is the Adirondack Park. History is in
our nature. The museum is supported in part by public funds from the New
York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. For information about all
that the museum has to offer, please call (518) 352-7311, or visit
www.adirondackmuseum.org .
###
