Date: Fri, 13 Mar, 1998
BUSINESS WIRE
By: Entertainment/News Editors, Environmental Writers &, Photographers
A Senator and a Captain! Senator Barbara Boxer and Captain Paul Watson to Be Guests of Honor March 28 at Star-Studded Twelfth Annual Genesis Awards

LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE) Special Honors to Be Presented by Keely Shaye Smith and Gretchen Wyler and Pierce Brosnan and Martin Sheen, Respectively United States Senator Barbara Boxer and Captain Paul Watson, founder/president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, will be Guests of Honor at the Twelfth Annual Genesis Awards, The Ark Trust, Inc. announced Friday.

The Genesis Awards recognize members of the major news and entertainment media who have spotlighted animal issues with courage, creativity and integrity. Presented by The Ark Trust, Inc., an Encino, Calif.-based non-profit animal protection organization, Genesis Awards ceremonies will be celebrated at a taped-for-television, star-studded gala on Saturday evening, March 28, in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Unlike Genesis awardees whose works are honored for spotlighting animal issues, Guests of Honor each year are heralded for having personally "made news" on behalf of animals.

Senator Boxer has been called the leading voice for the protection of wildlife in the United States Senate. In 1997, she persuaded the Agency for International Development to prohibit U.S. dollars from being used to support trophy hunting of African elephants, an animal at risk of extinction. Senator Boxer also blocked legislative efforts to weaken the dolphin protection standards established under the Boxer-Biden Dolphin Protection Act. She then introduced legislation to lift the embargo on foreign dolphin-safe tuna imports while protecting the dolphin-safe tuna label. Since the Boxer-Biden law was passed in 1990, dolphin deaths resulting from tuna fishing have decreased from 60,000 to 3,000 per year.

Without Senator Boxer's voice in the United States Senate, the cause of animal protection would suffer a devastating blow.

As founder/president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (and one of the original co-founders of Greenpeace), Captain Watson is a highly effective defender of marine wildlife on the high seas. As commander of his ship, Sea Shepherd, he positions himself between marine wildlife in peril and those who endeavor to harm it. In 1997, Norway -- which continues to defy the International Whaling Commission's ban on hunting whales -- issued an Interpol warrant for Watson's arrest on charges that he rammed a Norwegian Coast Guard vessel and for the 1992 dockside scuttling of a whaling ship. Although innocent of all charges, Watson was arrested while on a mission in Europe and languished in jail for 80 days while the court considered his extradition to Norway.

His plight made worldwide news. Facing a possible lifetime in prison or almost certain death at the hands of angry Norwegian whalers, Watson ultimately was able to convince the court he was a political prisoner in the battle to save whales and was set free.

Making the Special Guest of Honor presentation to Senator Boxer will be former Genesis Awardee and journalist Keely Shaye Smith and founder/president of The Ark Trust, Gretchen Wyler. Smith worked with Boxer's office to oppose the "Dolphin Death Act," legislation that would have gutted the protections for dolphins which Boxer originally championed while in Congress. Presenting the Guest of Honor distinction to Captain Watson will be his friends Pierce Brosnan and Martin Sheen.

Other celebrities slated to attend include co-hosts Joely Fisher ("Ellen") and Bill Maher ("Politically Incorrect") joined by presenters Alicia Silverstone, Lyle Lovett, Leeza Gibbons, Montel Williams, Harry Hamlin, Ed Begley Jr., Sid Caesar, Shari Belafonte, Tippi Hedren, Linda Blair, Ally Walker ("Profiler"), Frances Fisher ("Titanic"), Joe Mantegna ("Up Close and Personal"), Kevin Nealon ("Hiller and Diller"), Bonnie Hunt ("Jerry Maguire"), James Cromwell ("L.A. Confidential"), Tiffani-Amber Thiessen ("Beverly Hills 90210"), David James Elliot ("JAG"), Peter Scolari ("Disney's Honey I Shrunk The Kids: The TV Show"), Alex D. Linz ("Home Alone 3"), Andy Kindler ("The Pet Shop"), and "Verdell" the dog ("As Good As It Gets").

1997 Genesis Award recipients will go to 21 winners, including, among others, Utopia Pictures' "Shiloh" (Feature Film); Paramount Pictures' "Charlotte's Web" (Film Classic; 1972); CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond" (Television Comedy Series); Fox's "Millennium" (Television Dramatic Series); ABC's "Primetime Live" (Network Newsmagazine); "Hard Copy" (Syndicated Newsmagazine); NBC's "Leeza" (Television Talk Show); and New York Times Magazine (Newspaper Feature Article).

The 1997 Doris Day Music Award -- honoring musical achievement for animals -- will be a Tribute to the late John Denver by honoring the song he made famous, "You Say The Battle Is Over" about the slaughter of Earth's majestic wildlife, composed by David Mallett.

All 1997 Genesis Awards are selected from material released in 1997. Entries are submitted by those in the industry or by "people's choice," with finalists voted upon by the 17-member Genesis Awards Committee.

Since its inception in 1986, the Genesis Awards has become the nation's premier animal issues "consciousness-raiser," and the award is the only major news and entertainment media distinction concerning animal issues. The awards ceremony will be taped-for-television before a live audience of 1,000 attendees to world-premiere as a 90-minute TV special on Tuesday, May 5, at 6 p.m. PT and 9 p.m. ET on Animal Planet, with four encore broadcasts. Sponsored in part by Hallmark Entertainment, Inc., The Twelfth Annual Genesis Awards is produced by Paul Flattery and directed by Stanley Dorfman. To purchase tickets, call 818/501-2ARK.



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