Guggenheim Award Announced for Pelham’s Fen Montaigne

Pelham author Fen Montaigne has been awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to support his research on a book about the impact of global warming on Antarctica’s penguins.

His book, to be published by Henry Holt and Company, will tell the story of ecologist Bill Fraser, who has studied Adelie penguins for 32 years and has witnessed their rapid decline along much of the Antarctic Peninsula. Mr. Montaigne recently spent five months in Antarctica working as part of Fraser’s team of field biologists. He lived at Palmer Station, a 45-person scientific base run by the National Science Foundation.

The western Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than any place on earth in recent decades, with average winter temperatures rising by 9 degrees F. since 1950. The population of ice loving Adelie penguins around Palmer Station has declined by 75 percent since 1970.

Mr. Montaigne, who has lived with his wife and two daughters in Pelham since 1993, was one of 187 artists, scientists, scholars, writers, and journalists named as Guggenheim Foundation fellows last week. Nearly 2,900 people applied for fellowships from the foundation.

This is part of the April 14, 2006 online edition of The Pelham Weekly.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you. Click here.