[citation needed] Helvarg was born April 10, 1951, in New York City, the son of refugees; his mother left Nazi Germany and his father escaped civil war in Ukraine.
[4] The civil warfare known as "The Troubles" was at a height, and Helvarg submitted reports on the conflict to the Liberation News Service.
[4][5][6][7] Helvarg focused on the role of women in the conflict,[4] and highlighted allegations that agents of the British government had participated in sectarian murders.
[3] His exclusive reports included combat coverage of the first town to fall to Sandinista rebels,[11] the first delivery of U.S. gunships to El Salvador, the first visit to Contra camps in Honduras, and the last interview with Sister Ita Ford before her murder by the Salvadoran military.
[13] A visit to Antarctica in 1999 became material for several articles and books, and a daily log was published in Slate, the online news magazine.
He also became a member of the board of Reef Relief, a more specific marine conservation advocacy group, about which he had made a television documentary in 1994.
Helvarg attracted attention in early 2005 for a newspaper article in which he addressed comments made by conservative Christians (particularly James Dobson of the Focus on the Family) regarding perceived homosexual tendencies of SpongeBob SquarePants due to an explanation of the sexual biology of ocean life (Los Angeles Times January 26, 2005).
In response to suggestions by Dobson and others that the We Are Family Foundation was exploiting popular animated characters, including SpongeBob, to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among young people, Helvarg described the "immorality" in the oceans.
"Having lived in California for forty-four years, I was surprised by how much I learned from David Helvarg's book The Golden Shore.
Ocean Explorer Sylvia Earle says, "This book has the power to change the way you think about the world, about yourself, and the future of humankind."
Robert Kennedy Jr. says, "David Helvarg's terrific new book takes you to the cutting edge of adventure as he rides along with the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard.
Helvarg's book The War against the Greens (1994) describes organized opposition to the environmental movement in the United States.
He catalogued the use of violence that he believed to be organized by the movement against environmental activists, and the ineffective response of law-enforcement agencies.
The opposing view was put by Jesse Walker who, reviewing the book for American Enterprise, wrote that it "offers environmentalists a conspiracy theory to account for the populist backlash against their movement".
War against the Greens is widely cited by activists inside the environmental movement (for example Community Rights Counsel[14] and Land Tenure Center[15] ) and gave rise to numerous rebuttals from Wise Use and its supporters (including Ron Arnold).
This book prompted Senator John Kerry to observe that "David Helvarg underscores the full measure of the challenges before us: If we hope to explore the Blue Frontier, we must travel cautiously, repairing the damage we have done, understanding before we exploit, and always preserving the natural systems that have created it."
It was also one of the catalysts for the establishment of the Blue Frontier Campaign and has become a definitive text for US marine conservation (characterized as 'the Seaweed rebellion').
This reference book lists over 2,000 organizations involved in the conservation of the oceans and coastal areas that border the United States.
In Antarctica he observed scientists measuring the krill population and concludes that the reduction that they found is a consequence of increased water temperatures.
It is campaigning for an American Oceans Act to protect what the members call "our public seas" and is working to improve local, state, federal and global policies on marine conservation.