The Board of Trustees of the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake has announced the selection of Peter S. Paine, Jr. as the recipient of the 2010 Harold K. Hochschild Award.

The Harold K. Hochschild Award is dedicated to the memory of the museum’s founder, whose passion for the Adirondacks, its people, and environment inspired the creation of the Adirondack Museum. Since 1990 the museum has presented the award to a wide range of intellectual and community leaders throughout the Adirondack Park, highlighting their contributions to the region’s culture and quality of life.

The Adirondack Museum will formally present Peter Paine, Jr. with the Harold K. Hochschild Award on August 19, 2010.

Peter S. Paine, Jr., a retired partner of the international law firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, has long served as Chairman of Champlain National Bank in Willsboro, N.Y. He has devoted much of his life to exemplary public service in the Adirondack region. He is Trustee and former Chair of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy, and also served on the New York State Nature Conservancy Board of Trustees.

In addition, he was a founding member and long-time General Counsel of the Lake Champlain Committee and also one of the founding Trustees of what is now Environmental Advocates.

Paine currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the Fort Ticonderoga Association and is also a Trustee of the Adirondack Community Trust.

Peter Paine has played a key role in numerous land conservation projects in the Champlain Valley. These include the preservation as a bird sanctuary of the Four Brother Islands in Lake Champlain, and the addition of the Split Rock Mountain Range to the NYS Forest Preserve.

He was also a major donor to and co-organized the Noblewood Park and Nature Preserve project in the Town of Willsboro with Assemblywoman Teresa R. Sayward, and helped create the Coon Mountain Preserve in Westport. At his instigation, the Paine family donated conservation easements to the Adirondack Nature Conservancy starting in 1978, protecting five miles of shoreline on Lake Champlain and the Boquet River and some 1,000 acres of farmland and forest.

Peter Paine, Jr. served as a member of the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks (chaired by Harold K. Hochschild) from 1968 to 1970, and as a Commissioner of the Adirondack Park Agency from 1971 to 1995. In that capacity he was the principal draftsman of the Adirondack State Land Master Plan and New York State Wild Scenic and Recreational Rivers Legislation.

Paine received a North Country Citation from St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y. in 1974, the Ordre National du Merite from the Republic of France in 1984, and the Howard M. Zahniser Award for the Preservation of Wilderness in New York (shared with Peter A.A.Berle) in 2004.

A resident of Willsboro, N.Y., Paine is a hunter, fisherman, horseman and wilderness expedition leader.