New Jersey woman canoes from South Florida to New Orleans for a cause
Margo Pellegrino. Image via the Princeton Film Festival.
Margo Pellegrino is once again taking a canoe trip that seems daunting to us mere mortals on behalf of the environment.
The Medford Lakes activist is paddling this time from South Florida to New Orleans — a trip of more than 1,000 miles — to build support for national legislation to protect our oceans and coasts. She is doing this, her third major canoe trip for a cause, in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Pellegrino left April 15 from Fort Pierce, Fla., in her outrigger canoe, and earlier today, a spokeswoman for the NRDC said Pellegrino arrived in Key Largo last night and is waiting out bad weather there.
On her website, she is described as an “ordinary mother of two” — a woman who has also paddled from New Jersey to Washington, D.C. and from Miami to Maine to fight for federal ocean protections.
She and the NRDC want to ensure oceans aren’t neglected in climate change legislation before Congress, and support the creation of a Healthy Oceans Act similar in scope and purpose to the Clean Air Act.
On this trip, the plan is for Pellegrino to go ashore and meet people in Miami, Tampa and other cities, collecting citizens’ messages to their elected officials along the way.
An NRDC press release about Pellegrino’s trip focused on the economic argument for clean coasts and oceans – in Florida, like New Jersey, tourism generates billions of dollars a year in revenue and is a major part of the economy.
Green Jersey will follow Pellegrino’s progress; in the meantime, you can read her occasional posts to her own blog here.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
What a great story. She is such a hero. I love people who stand-up for what they believe in.
Ordinary, she’s not. Perhaps modest, passionate, and courageous!