David Helvarg


David Helvarg is an American journalist and environmental activist. He is the founder and president of the marine conservation lobbying organization Blue Frontier Campaign, a part of the Seaweed rebellion, which arose from his second book [|Blue Frontier]. His first book, The War against the Greens, puts a case that violent organized resistance is being orchestrated against the environmental movement.
Helvarg began his career as a freelance journalist before becoming a war correspondent and then returning to news journalism. He writes about politics, AIDS, and sea life. He has reported from every continent and he has been published in specialist and popular magazines, and US newspapers both locally and in syndication. His experience of military conflict, civil conflict and marine biology is the basis of his lobbying.

Early life

Helvarg was born April 10, 1951 in New York City, the son of refugees; his mother left Nazi Germany and his father escaped civil war in Ukraine. He grew up on Long Island, where he became a civil rights and anti-war activist. He attended Boston University and earned a bachelor's degree in history from Goddard College in Vermont, in 1974.

Works

Journalism

While still a student, Helvarg traveled to Northern Ireland in 1973. The civil warfare known as "The Troubles" was at a height, and Helvarg submitted reports on the conflict to the Liberation News Service. Helvarg focussed on the role of women in the conflict, and highlighted allegations that agents of the British government had participated in sectarian murders. After graduating from college, he moved to San Diego to work as a freelance journalist. He published "Ireland Diary; A Day in the Life" in the underground publication San Diego Door, and wrote for the weekly newspaper San Diego Newsline.
From 1979 to 1983, Helvarg covered the U.S. role in Central American conflicts, initially as a radio reporter for The Associated Press and Pacifica Radio in Nicaragua and El Salvador. His exclusive reports included combat coverage of the first town to fall to Sandinista rebels, the first delivery of U.S. gunships to El Salvador, the first visit to Contra camps in Honduras, and the last interview with Sister Ita Ford before her murder by the Salvadoran military. He was arrested by the Salvadoran army and deported from El Salvador in 1983 while reporting on a massacre of civilians.
After returning to California, he qualified as a private investigator, and resumed freelance writing. He wrote reports on underwater technology, articles about John Hoagland after conducting the photographer's last interview, and an interview with Jonas Salk. Helvarg became increasingly involved in television production, although he continued his freelance career. Throughout the late 1980s, his television topics were dominated by AIDS education, particularly for the Hispanic community.
In the early 1990s, he began to research the conflict between the US free-market environmentalist group Wise Use and the green movement, which was eventually published as The War against the Greens in 1994. The Wise Use movement alleged that the US environmentalist group Sierra Club commissioned Helvarg to write the book as an anti-Wise Use tirade and that his sponsors also sponsored a road show to tie Wise Use to an alleged far-right terrorist network. The same article described him as "a private investigator" without mentioning his role as a journalist.
A visit to Antarctica in 1999 became material for several articles and books, and a daily log was published in Slate, the online news magazine. His professional exposure to green activism and his ocean sports activities intersected in marine conservation, which became his focus. While researching his second book Blue Frontier—Saving America's Living Seas, Helvarg concluded that marine conservation needed its own focal point for activism in the United States, so he moved to Washington, D.C., and founded a lobbying organization: the Blue Frontier Campaign. He also became a member of the board of Reef Relief, a more specific marine conservation advocacy group, about which he had made a television documentary in 1994.
Helvarg attracted nationwide US attention in early 2005 for a syndicated newspaper article debunking comments by conservative Christians on the perceived homosexual tendencies of SpongeBob SquarePants, a cartoon character, by explaining the sexual biology of ocean life. In response to suggestions by Dobson and others that the We Are Family Foundation was exploiting popular animated characters, including SpongeBob, to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among young people, Helvarg used these incidents as a springboard to describe the "immorality" in the oceans.

Books

The Golden Shore - California's Love Affair with the Sea

"The Golden Shore" 2013. "Boy, I loved this book. David Helvarg captures, in a really readable way, the quirky and head-over-heels love we have for our seas." - Ted Danson.
"Having lived in California for forty-four years, I was surprised by how much I learned from David Helvarg's book The Golden Shore. It blew my mind. If you have the same love affair for the beautiful California coast and ocean as I do, this marvelous and compelling book is a must-read." - Jean-Michel Cousteau.

Saved by the Sea -- A Love Story with Fish

"Saved by the Sea" 2010. Ocean Explorer Sylvia Earle says, "This book has the power to change the way you think about the world, about yourself, and the future of humankind." Helvarg writes what he knows about the changes in his life and our Ocean world over the last half century.

"Rescue Warriors - The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes" (St. Martin's 2009)

Robert Kennedy Jr. says, "David Helvarg's terrific new book takes you to the cutting edge of adventure as he rides along with the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard. This in-depth and lively look at the history and changing missions of America's 'Rescue Warriors' should be considered a must-read for anyone who loves the water or cares about the safety, security, and stewardship of our nation from sea to shining sea."
Bill McKibben writes, "They say that 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help' is the ultimate oxymoron. But as this vivid book makes powerfully clear, in the case of the Coast Guard it's the simple truth. Stow this volume next to the chart case."

"50 Ways To Save the Ocean" (Inner Ocean, 2006)

writes, "Combining wisdom and humor, scientific accuracy and artistic genius, Helvarg and Toomey show why the ocean matters to us all...Everyone, from toddler to tycoon, can find inspiration for action in this must-have guide to ocean care."
"This is a great book - it makes saving the oceans fun and doable " adds actor Ted Danson
"This book is an important guide for the public to saving our oceans." - Leon Panetta, former chair - Pew Oceans commission & co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, former Director of the CIA, current United States Secretary of Defense.

''The War against the Greens''

Helvarg's book The War against the Greens describes organized opposition to the environmental movement in the United States. He investigated the Wise Use movement, which he characterizes as a network of anti-environmentalist groups. Wise Use aims to facilitate extensive use of natural resources and to privatize the National Park Service. The first edition explored the origins of the organization in 1988 and its covert support by the administration of U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Helvarg identified its funding and the multinational corporations and other powerful figures with which it was associated. He catalogued the use of violence that he believed to be organized by the movement against environmental activists, and the ineffective response of law-enforcement agencies. A revised edition published in 2004 extended this to cover the early years of President George W. Bush's administration.
Wisconsin Stewardship Network News described it as a book that "provides a fascinating and frightening insight into the violent fringe of the anti-conservation Wise Use movement in its entirety to readers who want a detailed examination of the origins, development and violent tendencies of Wise Use." The opposing view was put by Jesse Walker who, reviewing the book for American Enterprise, wrote that it "offers environmentalists a conspiracy theory to account for the populist backlash against their movement". Helvarg had accused Wise Use of astroturfing; Walker described his book as "a weapon in a propaganda war".
War against the Greens is widely cited by activists inside the environmental movement and gave rise to numerous rebuttals from Wise Use and its supporters.

''Blue Frontier—Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness''

Helvarg's second book, Blue Frontier— Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness, was named on the Los Angeles Times "Best Books of 2001" republished in 2006. In it Helvarg explores the effects of human activity in general, and of commerce and policy in particular, on marine life. He postulates a trend towards destruction, and suggests that it is possible to reverse this. He then describes some of the people and groups that are working to preserve or enhance the marine environment.
This book prompted Senator John Kerry to observe that "David Helvarg underscores the full measure of the challenges before us: If we hope to explore the Blue Frontier, we must travel cautiously, repairing the damage we have done, understanding before we exploit, and always preserving the natural systems that have created it." It was also one of the catalysts for the establishment of the Blue Frontier Campaign and has become a definitive text for US marine conservation.

''The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide''

Helvarg is the editor of Blue Frontier Campaign's first major publication: The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide, a directory for those interested in the protection and restoration of United States coastal lands and waters. Blue Frontier Campaign plans to publish a new edition of the guide every two years.
This reference book lists over 2,000 organizations involved in the conservation of the oceans and coastal areas that border the United States. Each entry includes contact information and a brief description of that organization's activities. The directory is divided into four listings: a geographical listings of groups; relevant government agencies; academic marine programs; and marine and coastal parks, and protected areas.

''Feeling the Heat''

Helvarg contributed two chapters to Feeling the Heat—Reports from the Frontlines of Climate Change : Chapter Eight 'Australia, Florida and Fiji: Reefs At Risk' and Chapter 10 'Antarctica: The Ice is Moving' are about threatened ecosystems.
The book is a development of a suite of articles that appeared in the October/November 2000 edition of E/The Environmental Magazine. The publishers "aimed to move beyond the scientific debate to document the evidence for a changing climate". Each chapter is a first person account of places threatened by global warming. According to Helvarg, warming waters are killing the world's coral and threatening the extinction of Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the reefs around the Florida Keys, while the rising waters threaten to engulf the entire ocean nation of Fiji. In Antarctica he observed scientists measuring the krill population and concludes that the reduction that they found is a consequence of increased water temperatures.

Broadcasting

Helvarg has produced more than 40 television documentaries broadcast by PBS, The Discovery Channel, and others. His 1986 documentary Sex Inc. was the highest rating show broadcast on the San Francisco PBS station KQED. Other documentaries focused on the military, politics, health and environmental topics. He is a commentator for the National Public Radio station Public Radio International's program Marketplace.
His first documentaries drew upon his experiences as a war correspondent in Northern Ireland and Central America. When he moved to San Francisco he was commissioned to produce programs about AIDS awareness for the Hispanic community and these led to other documentaries about Hispanic health. In 1989 Globe TV commissioned a program about Greenpeace to coincide with the launch of the new Rainbow Warrior vessel. This brought Helvarg into contact with green activists, with whose cause he found he sympathized. He would return to green themes in 1991 and 1992 but in the meantime he continued to make series about health, and topical news. From 1992 onwards his energies were focussed on environmental programming with some health commissions.
As of 2005 he continues to plan a series of documentaries about ocean stewardship to support the work of the Blue Frontier Campaign.

Blue Frontier Campaign

In 2003 Helvarg founded the marine conservation activist organization Blue Frontier Campaign, of which he became the president. Originally entitled the "Ocean Awareness Project", the Campaign has established a nationwide network of grassroots lobbyists. It is campaigning for an American Oceans Act to protect what the members call "our public seas" and is working to improve local, state, federal and global policies on marine conservation. Helvarg writes articles and books on its behalf. He edited the 2005–2006 Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide and (with Philippe Cousteau and 'Sherman's Lagoon' cartoonist Jim Toomey, the book, '50 Ways to Save the Ocean' and has organized several conferences: in Washington, D.C. in July 2004 and March 2009 and at the National Aquarium in Baltimore in April 2005 and San Francisco in 2005. These conferences brought together activists, academics, officials, and politicians in a series of seminars. The Campaign is based in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area where Helvarg lives.

Awards

Helvarg won his first national award in 1988 when he won an Emmy for community service in recognition of his work on AIDS Lifeline, a networked television AIDS awareness campaign. His subsequent awards include two National Association for Interpretation awards for Interpretive Communications, the Nike Earthwrite Award, a National Health Information Award and a CINE Golden Eagle Award. In 2005, Coastal Living magazine gave him their Leadership Award. In 2007 he won the Herman Melville Award.

Television and video work