Activists Honored For Environmental Work Spokane’s Hoffman, Osborn Awarded ‘Hero’ Citations

Two prominent Spokane activists are among six people recently honored for their efforts to protect Washington’s environment.

They are Patricia Hoffman, the Spokane Valley veterinarian who founded Save Our Summers, a group fighting grass field burning; and Dr. John Osborn, a physician and co-founder of the Inland Empire Public Lands Council, a forest watchdog group.

Gov. Mike Lowry presented the Washington Environmental Council’s “Environmental Heroes” awards at a recent ceremony in Seattle.

The event “celebrates the accomplishments of people who are working to keep Washington one of the most livable places in the world,” said Seattle attorney David Mann, WEC president.

Hoffman was honored for forging a powerful coalition of Spokane doctors, elected officials and people with lung disease that’s put pressure on state officials to douse field burning. In March, the state Department of Ecology announced its first-ever regulation to phase out field burning by 1998.

Osborn was cited for co-founding Forest Watch with Tom Jay. It’s a network of citizens who monitor U.S. Forest Service activities, including timber sales, in the Inland Northwest.

Osborn also was honored for the Lands Council’s most recent public education campaign on the threat of toxic mining wastes polluting the Spokane River and the Lake Coeur d’Alene watershed.

The other award recipients include:

Conservation biologist Mitch Friedman of Bellingham, the founder of Northwest Ecosystem Alliance. The group made headlines when the Forest Service denied its 1994 bid for salvage rights to 275 acres of timber in the Okanogan National Forest because the group did not intend to log the forest.

Doreen Johnson, who monitors logging on state and private lands in King and Pierce counties and has served for a decade on the state’s Timber/Fish/Wildlife Committee.

Doyle McClure, a retired aerospace scientist who has worked in Skagit County to ensure the state Growth Management Act is followed and to protect bald eagle habitat along the Skagit River.

Homer Frazier, a retired industrial engineer, who helped defeat two proposed oil pipelines in the Puget Sound and has worked for more than two decades to protect the Olympic Peninsula.

Frazier received WEC’s President’s Award for lifetime achievement.

The WEC, founded in 1967, is a grassroots organization of nearly 3,000 individual members and about 100 groups working to protect the environment.

, DataTimes