Awards & honors
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2012:
GreenInterview.com host Silver Donald Cameron, 75, was on June 29, 2012 awarded the Order of Canada, for his career as journalist, writer, and community activist. Cameron in the April 2011 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE and on his personal web site denounced the legal position of the Canada Revenue Agency that “an activity or purpose is only charitable when it provides a benefit to humans.” Concluded Cameron, “The coyote, the cod and the chestnut have a right to live and flourish, and advocating on their behalf–with or without a benefit to humans–is a deeply moral activity and a legitimate charitable purpose.”
Elizabeth Oliver, 72, who founded Animal Refuge Kansai in Osaka, Japan, in 1990, and Will Travers, 53, who in 1984 cofounded the Born Free Foundation with his parents, actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, have received the Order of the British Empire. Previous OBE honorees include Jean Gilchrist, now in her 43nd year as director of the Kenya SPCA (2009); International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal (2008); International Animal Rescue cofounder Alan Knight, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust founder Daphne Sheldrick, and the late Stella Brewer Marsden, founder of the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Association sanctuary in Gambia (all 2006); Care For The Wild founder Bill Jordan, now heading the Bill Jordan Wildlife Defence Fund (2005); Dogs Trust chair Clarissa Baldwin (2003); and Animals Asia Foundation founder Jill Robinson (1998).
The Los Angeles Department of Animal Services’ Small Animal Rescue Team has received the 2012 Higgins & Langley Memorial Awards in Swiftwater Rescue. The awards have been presented since 1993 by members of the Swiftwater Rescue Committee of the National Association for Search & Rescue in memory of writer and filmmaker Earl Higgins, who was killed in 1980 while rescuing a child from a flash flood along the Los Angeles River, and Jeffrey Langley, a Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic who in 1993 fell from a helicopter while trying to retrieve a deceased hiker’s remains.
