Walters Receives Volvo Environment Prize

Carl Walters (r) receives the Volvo Environment Prize

The Volvo Environment Prize award was handed over to the Laureates, Prof. Ray Hilborn, Prof. Daniel Pauly and Prof. Carl Walters at the Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden on Oct. 26, 2006 by Ms. Maud Olofsson, Swedish Minister of Industry, Mr. Leif Johansson, CEO and President of the Volvo Group and Mr. Fredrik Arp, President and CEO of Volvo Car Corporation. Photo by Sandra Buckingham.

When Carl Walters isn`t busy pounding out mathematical models on his laptop or teaching the finer points of adaptive management to graduate fisheries students, he can usually be found fishing from his blue kayak on the waters behind his house in Cedar Key.

Late October, however, was extraordinarily different. He was in Sweden, on the stage of the Stockholm Concert House, accepting the Volvo Environment Prize for 2006, along with two other colleagues from the U.S. and Canada.

This prize was established to support and recognize environmental research and development. Since its establishment in 1988 it has gained the status of one of the world`s most prestigious environmental prizes.

The prize committee cited Carl for his "brilliant analyses of fishery stocks and harvest management and his seminal writings about adaptive management now widely used by ecologists, other scientists and managers throughout the world".

The Swedes honored the three laureates and their families with a weeklong series of events in Gothenburg and Stockholm, highlighted by dinner in the foyer of the Nobel Museum and a large banquet in the courtyard of the National Museum.