Helen Cherullo honored with Alaska Wilderness League's Voice of the Wild award

Good evening. My name is Amy Gulick and I'm the photographer and author of Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest. Because of my work in the Tongass National Forest, one year ago I stood before you honored and humbled to receive the Voice of the Wild Award. Tonight I stand before you honored and humbled to present this year's Voice of the Wild Award to Helen Cherullo.

Helen with photographer Amy Gulick.

Helen is the Executive Director of Braided River, the conservation imprint of The Mountaineers Books. For those of you not familiar with Braided River, it got its start with a dramatic story that even Hollywood couldn't dream up. To tell this story, we need to go back in time to 2003. George W. Bush was in the White House, Congress was sharply divided with Republican control of both the House and Senate, and our country renamed French Fries to "Freedom Fries." The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge made headline news with repeated attempts to open the coastal plain to oil development. Enter Helen. Through The Mountaineers Books, Helen was about to publish a book called Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land by photographer Subhankar Banerjee. Timing is everything, and with ink still wet from the printing press, this book was rushed to the floor of the United States Senate by the Alaska Wilderness League, and thrust into the air by Senator Barbara Boxer during an oil drilling debate. The book provided irrefutable proof that the Arctic Refuge was not a vast nothingness and that both wildlife and people rely on it remaining intact. The subsequent vote to open the refuge to oil drilling failed to pass. A victory! But wait -- shortly thereafter, the book's photographer Subhankar Banerjee received notice from the Smithsonian Institution, which depends on Congress for its funding, that his photographic exhibit of the Arctic Refuge, which had been slated to show in a prominent location of the museum was banished to the basement and stripped of any meaningful content. Coincidence? I think not. A blow to the efforts to protect the Arctic Refuge? Hardly. There's nothing like controversy to stir up a firestorm of media publicity, and there's nothing like compelling photographs and stories to engage and endear people to the wild places that we all work so hard to conserve. And where some may have viewed the Smithsonian debacle as a defeat, Helen saw an opportunity, and Braided River was born. She has since gone on to publish 10 more books – books that have not only ended up on the Senator floor, but they have also made their way into the hands of President Obama and onto the desks of officials who manage our cherished public lands. Well done Helen.

Helen Cherullo with Tom Campion and Cindy Shogan of Alaska Wilderness League

I don't think I've ever met someone with so much patience, who trusts others' instincts and allows them the freedom to run with what can seem at the start like purely fanatical ideas. Helen takes a crazy idea and turns it into an engaging story that will resonate with people who value our wild lands for their beauty, wildlife and their benefits to all of us. Stories, after all, help us make sense of the world around us. We teach our children morals by telling them stories like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Tortoise and the Hare, and The Little Engine That Could. By creating stories for conservation, Helen helps us imagine a hopeful future for our wild lands. And if we can't imagine what we want the future to be, we'll never get there. Helen plants that seed and sparks our imaginations. We remember stories. Stories like Seasons of Life and Land, The Last Polar Bear, and Salmon in the Trees. How lucky are we -- and the caribou, bears, salmon, and wolves -- that she's chosen to tell the stories of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Tongass National Forest, and the Western Arctic?

Please join me in honoring Helen Cherullo with the Voice of the Wild Award.