Nine-year-old Lyle Solla-Yates has been commended for leading his peers in efforts to save the environment.

Two years ago, Lyle did a science report and found out that manatees are in danger of extinction. Soon after that, when he read about a dying manatee, injured in an accident with a careless boater, he organized a group of fellow students into an environmental group called Pals of Wildlife.

Pals’ slogan is “When the animals die, we’re dead meat.” Members have joined a Greenpeace boycott against a local fast-food restaurant to protest their use of Icelandic fish. They’ve also marched at a local mall to protest the slaughter of animals for fur. Lyle and his group also raise money for environmental groups.

A year ago, Pals members went around the neighborhood distributing flyers to 500 people, asking them to leave their old newspapers on the doorstep. Pals members pick up the newspaper on Saturdays and take it to the recycling center.

Lyle and his fellow young environmentalists organized an “Earth Day Birthday” celebration, a fundraiser that raised $412 for rainforest preservation. Lyle said it was a natural thing for them to do. “If we didn’t have the Earth, then what would we have?”

Lyle’s latest move: POW members made stuffed dolphins out of paper and sent them to Senator Connie Mack, urging his support of tuna-catching techniques that don’t harm dolphins.

Update: Lyle Solla-Yates graduated from the University of Virginia’s Master of Urban and Environmental Planning program. He is the Operations Manager of the Nature Conservancy in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is also a free-lance journalist for on-line company Bacon’s Rebellion and Adjunct Professor at Piedmont Virginia Community College.