The Carbon County Chamber of Commerce honored Dan Kunkle as its Citizen of the Year for 2010 during its annual dinner held at the Mahoning Valley Country Club.

Kunkle was presented the honor by Elissa Garofalo of the Delaware and Lehigh Corridor Commission who said Kunkle is the person responsible for the turnaround of the bare landscape of the mountainside behind the Lehigh Gap Nature Center into growing of grasses and trees.

Kunkle left his teaching position at Bethlehem Freedom High School in 2004 to become the volunteer director of the Wildlife Information Center, now known as the Lehigh Gap Nature Center. He went on to initiate the Lehigh Gap Restoration Project in which the center purchased 750 acres on the Kittatinny Ridge near Palmerton and transformed a barren, moon-like mountain into an abundant grassland habitat. A community nature and educational center was eventually established on the property.