LAKE PLACID — Protect the Adirondacks announced that it will honor a former state Adirondack Park Agency board member at its annual meeting in July.

Dick Booth, who served on the APA board from 2007 to 2016, will be presented with the Howard Zahniser Adirondack Award at the green group’s meeting in Lake Placid on July 15.

“Dick Booth was a towering figure during his time on the APA Board where he defended Wilderness and worked to ensure that the APA upheld New York’s environmental laws,” Protect Executive Director Peter Bauer said in a press release. “Dick Booth believed in the Forest Preserve as a sanctuary for biological diversity and wildlife, but also a resource to provide an array of outdoor recreational experiences that underwrite the tourism economy of the Adirondack Park”

“Howard Zahniser… relentlessly campaigned for the National Wilderness Act, which became law in 1965,” the press release reads. “Zahniser’s Wilderness advocacy brought him to investigate the forever wild protections in the NYS Constitution for the Forest Preserve, which Zahniser used as a model for the National Wilderness Act.

“Zahniser was so taken with the Forest Preserve and the Adirondacks that he purchased a camp in the Town of Johnsburgh near the Siamese Ponds Wilderness area that his family continues to use today.”

To register for the annual meeting, which will take place at Heaven Hills Farm, visit www.protectadks.org.