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The Indianapolis Zoological Society Inc. on Tuesday announced Pablo Borboroglu as the 2023 winner of the Indianapolis Prize, billed as the world’s leading award for animal conservation.
Borboroglu is the founder and president of the Global Penguin Society, which the zoo said has protected 32 million acres of penguin marine and terrestrial habitat since 2009. He is also the co-founder of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Penguin Specialist Group, which works to advance international penguin conservation action.
Borboroglu will receive an unrestricted $250,000 award and will be recognized at the Indianapolis Prize Gala in September.
“Dr. Pablo Borboroglu is responsible for major achievements in understanding penguin behavior and ecology,” Indianapolis Zoological Society CEO Rob Shumaker said in written remarks. “He has preserved millions of acres of critical penguin habitat, which is an astonishing achievement. He is a powerful, optimistic and expert voice for animal conservation and is extremely deserving of this year’s Indianapolis Prize.”
The award “recognizes and rewards conservationists who have made significant progress in saving an animal species, or multiple species, from extinction.”
The zoo said when he founded the Global Penguin Society, Borboroglu discovered only six breeding pairs of penguins at the El Pedral colony in Argentina. By reducing human impacts and designating the area as a wildlife refuge, the area is now home to 4,000 pairs.
Borboroglu was also the leader of the creation of Blue Patagonia, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, which protects 40% of the world’s population of Magellanic penguins. The reserve, which spans 200 miles of coastline and 7.6 million acres of land and ocean, is home to 67 species of animals, more than 120 species of birds and nearly 200 species of marine invertebrates.
Borboroglu said the award will be instrumental in supporting efforts to protect penguins and their habitat.
“Needing both land and sea, penguins face unprecedented threats requiring large-scale change,” he said. “Through this award, we hope to inspire and encourage people around the world to take decisive action in safeguarding the environment. It is only through our collective efforts that we can ensure our environment and its wildlife are able to thrive.”
Borboroglu is the ninth Indianapolis Prize winner and the first from South America.
The remaining finalists for this year’s award will each receive $50,000. They will also be recognized at the gala, along with Peruvian primatologist Fanny Cornejo, who last month was named the inaugural winner of the $50,000 Emerging Conservationist Award.
The gala will take place in downtown Indianapolis on Sept. 30.
Other finalists for the prize:
Christophe Boesch (Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology; Wild Chimpanzee Foundation, Germany) A finalist for the 2021 Indianapolis Prize, Boesch is a primatologist dedicated to providing alternatives to bushmeat and applying new technology to great ape conservation, decreasing strain on wild chimpanzee populations. The zoo said he uncovered the effects of rapid deforestation across sub-Saharan Africa and promoted new areas for protecting the remaining chimpanzee populations in Guinea.
Gerardo Ceballos (Institute of Ecology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico) – A finalist for the Indianapolis Prize in 2010, 2014 and 2021, Ceballos is a champion for jaguars in Mexico, conducting the first country-level jaguar census. Ceballos developed successful conservation strategies for endangered mammals in North America, including the black-footed ferret. The zoo said he also was a key proponent in the passage of the Mexico’s Act for Endangered Species, which now protects more than 40,000 animals.
Karen Eckert (Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network, WIDECAST, USA) – As the executive director of WIDECAST, Eckert promotes the recovery and sustainable management of sea turtle populations in more than 40 nations and territories. The zoo said she has helped protect six species of endangered sea turtles and mobilized community and government support in Caribbean nations to fully protect sea turtles.
Biruté Mary Galdikas (Orangutan Foundation International, USA) – The co-founder of Orangutan Foundation International, Galdikas is an orangutan researcher who first documented the long orangutan birth interval and recorded more than 400 types of food consumed by orangutans, providing unprecedented detail about orangutan ecology, according to the zoo. She has contributed to the release of more than 1,000 rehabilitated orangutans into the wild and has rescued and relocated an additional 200 wild orangutans into the wild.
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (Conservation Through Public Health, Uganda) – Kalema-Zikusoka promotes conservation by cultivating an understanding of how humans and wildlife can coexist in protected areas in Africa. She is the founder of Conservation Through Public Health, an organization promoting biodiversity conservation by enabling people and wildlife to coexist by improving health and livelihoods in and around Africa’s protected areas.
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