Animal defenders win seven major environmental conservation awards

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Save The Elephants founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton is to
receive the $100,000 Indianapolis Prize and accompanying Lilly Medal
on September 25, 2010. The awards are presented by Cummins Inc.,
maker of diesel engines. The 2009 winner was longtime Wildlife
Conservation Society field biologist George Schaller.
“Four decades ago,” recalled the award announcement,
“Douglas-Hamilton pioneered scientific study of elephant social
behavior. He led emergency anti-poaching efforts in Uganda to bring
the elephant population there from the brink of extinction. In
September 2009, Douglas-Hamilton worked to rescue a rare herd of
desert elephants in northern Kenya and Mali, threatened by one of
the worst droughts in nearly a dozen years. In the spring of 2010, a
devastating flood destroyed the Save the Elephants camp
in Kenya including staff tents, computers, and years of field
research notes. With a team of local researchers, the camp is now
being rebuilt.”

The announcement also noted that Douglas-Hamilton helped to
lead successful opposition to Tanzanian and Zambian proposals to sell
stockpiled elephant ivory.
Animal defenders on Earth Day 2010 won four of the six
$150,000 Goldman Environmental Prizes. Sereivathana Tuy, 39, of
Cambodia, was recognized for promoting nonlethal protection of crops
and villages from elephant rampages, primarily through public
education and fencebuilding. Randall Arauz, of Costa Rica, who
founded the Association for the Restoration of Sea Turtles in 1997,
was recognized for seven years of efforts against shark fishing,
including winning passage of both national and United Nations
legislation against killing sharks just for their fins, and winning
a string of court victories seeking enforcement of the Costa Rican
national laws. Soy and corn farmer Lynn Henning, 52, of Hudson
Township, Michigan, was honored for her work since 1999 in leading
Sierra Club campaigns against factory farming. Malgorzata Gorska,
37, of the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, was honored
for 14 years of ultimately successfully effort to keep the Via
Baltica expressway between Warsaw and Helsinki from cutting through
the Rospuda Valley, a rich wetland habitat for wolves, elk, lynx,
boars, otter, and beaver, as well as birds. Gorska is now
fighting a plan to build an airport in the same vicinity.
Lawrence Mugisha, VMD, operations director for the
Chimpanzee Sanctuary & Wildlife Conservation Trust since 2003, in
May 2010 was named inaugural recipient of the Rudolph Ippen Young
Scientist Award, presented by the European Association of Zoo &
Wildlife Veterinarians in memory of German zoonotic disease
researcher Rudolph Ippen, who died in 2009. Mugisha was honored a
month after Chimpanzee Sanctuary & Wildlife Conservation Trust
educator Silver Birungi received the South Conservation Education
Commitment Award from the International Primatological Society. The
Chimapnze Sanctuary & Wildlife Conserv-ation Trust cares for 44
orphaned chimpanzees at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary on
Lake Entebbe in Uganda.