SEATTLE -- This summer KIRO 7, with our parent company, Cox Enterprises and the Trust for Public Land, launched a nationwide program to honor environmental heroes in Western Washington. These heroes work behind the scenes to improve and preserve shared parks and outdoor spaces.

Now, we're proud to introduce the first-ever Cox Conserves Hero: Mike Town, an environmental sciences teacher at Redmond High School.

Steve Raible presented Town with a $5,000 check Thursday that he immediately donated to the Washington Wilderness Coalition.

Town has been instrumental in turning the Wild Sky Wilderness act into law.

"We came up with the concept of wilderness areas, and forever protecting them is a direct connection to my students because I look at the next generation every day and now that this is protected means they'll have just as much opportunity to enjoy it as I have," Town said in accepting the award.

By day, Town is teaches at Redmond High School. In his spare time over the past nine years, he helped turn the Wild Sky Wilderness Act into law. He founded a local grassroots group, spent hundreds of hours documenting every component of Wild Sky -- 106,000 acres near Skykomish -- and consulted members of Congress and the press on boundary issues. As a result, this past spring a new wilderness was created within a one-hour drive of almost a million people. It’s the first new wilderness area in Washington state in 24 years.

Town already has his eye on 2 million more acres for possible wilderness designation.

We knew when we began this process that we have many heroes in our midst. The nominations ranged from people picking up litter in their neighborhoods and planting community gardens to cleaning unstaffed city property and restoring salmon runs. They came from all over Western Washington, and even one from Spokane.

In addition to Town, the finalists included:

Andrew Catero, who is restoring a parcel of land in northeast Seattle

Karen Dougherty, who picks up litter in Island Lake every day

Nancie Kosnoff, who brought the first farmers market to Queen Anne and cofounded the Good Neighbor Garden Project

Judy Pickens, who has restored Fauntleroy Creek and engaged students in environmental stewardship

We’d like to thank all of you who sent in their nominations. You can find out more about Cox Conserves Heroes and see stories about all the finalists at Cox Conserves Heroes.

Our hope is to inspire you to take action and to participate in a future Cox Conserves Heroes award process. Until then, go to Tell Us Your Story and let us know what you do now to improve and preserve our shared outdoor spaces. And, visit us often to learn what other kirotv.com viewers are doing to make our region a better place for all of us.

We’ll be looking for more heroes in 2009, so be sure to let us know who yours are!