By Khalifa Hemed
Published June 21, 2019

Born Free, an Oscar-Winning Blockbuster based on the story of the animal conservation of George and Joy Adamson that is directed by James Hill and Tom McGowan in which Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna starre, was released in Britain in March 1966.A United Kingdom-based wildlife charity is inviting conservationists around the world to apply for its award.

The charity, Born Free Foundation, says the winner of its Virginia McKenna Award for Compassionate Conservation 2019 stand to win a £15,000 grant ‘to help implement their Compassionate Conservation agenda, as well as support from Born Free to help raise their professional profile world-wide.’

Born Free says it ‘promotes Compassionate Conservation which strives to enhance the survival of threatened species in the wild and protect natural habitats while respecting the needs and safeguarding the welfare of individual animals. Born Free seeks to have a positive impact on animals in the wild and protect their ecosystems in perpetuity, for their own intrinsic value and for the critical roles they play within the natural world.’

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Virginia McKenna OBE, the actress and campaigner who, together with her late husband, Bill Travers, and her eldest son, Will Travers, co-founded Born Free Foundation in 1984 and after whom the award is named, says, “I hope this award will recognise, inspire and support outstanding individual conservationists, researchers and practitioners who place a very high priority on animal welfare while undertaking field conservation of species under threat, conservation policy or environmental education.”

Any one interested in this call for application is advised to ‘submit a short application explaining their background and demonstrating the relevance of their work to both animal welfare and conservation, as well as providing a concise proposal of the work the Virginia McKenna Award grant will enable them to implement’.

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Any one interested in the Virginia McKenna Award (VMA) for Compassionate Conservation 2019 call for application is advised to 'submit a short application explaining their background and demonstrating the relevance of their work to both animal welfare and conservation, as well as providing a concise proposal of the work the Virginia McKenna Award grant will enable them to implement'.The award traces its origin on George Adamson, an English game warden at a Kenyan national park who, in self defence, kills a lioness only to discover the dead animal is survived by three cubs that guilt forces him to care for from his home. He and his wife, Joy, care for the cubs. They then ship the two big ones to a zoo in Holland while the smallest one remains with them. However, when the cub they have named Elsa is blamed for causing an elephant stampede in the nearby village, John Kendall, the head warden, gives the Adamsons an ultimatum to either train Elsa to survive in the wild or send her to a zoo.The couple opt for the former and, as they say, the rest is an adventure from which stories, movies, songs and awards like the Virginia McKenna Award for Compassionate Conservation have been crafted over the years.

In fact, Joy Adamson wrote three books on their adventure with the three orphaned cubs: Born Free (1960), Living Free (1961) and Forever Free (1963).

Born Free, an Oscar-winning Blockbuster based on Joy Adamson’s story and directed by James Hill and Tom McGowan in which Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna starred was released in Britain in March 1966.

McKenna has since been knighted for her services to wildlife and the arts.

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Virgina McKenna, who was knighted for her animal conservation efforts and love for the ars, says she hopes the award will recognise, inspire and support outstanding individual conservationists, researchers and practitioners who place a very high priority on animal welfare while undertaking field conservation of species under threat, conservation policy or environmental education.Still interested in hearing more about the Virginia McKenna Award for Compassionate Conservation 2019 and how you could win the £15000 grant to assist you in implementing your Conservation agenda as your professional profile is boosted around the globe?

The details you need, including how to submit an application for consideration, are online at bornfree.org.uk/vma.

Born Free says this is the seventh year that the VM Award will recognise individuals across the globe.

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Previous winners of the award, Born Free says, include:

  • Jackson Mbeke, Director of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education (GRACE) for his work with critically endangered eastern lowland gorillas
  • Shivani Bhalla, of the Ewaso Lions Project, for her work on human/lion conflict in Kenya
  • Professor Anna Nekaris, of Oxford Brookes University and the Little Fireface Project, for her work on slow loris conservation and welfare
  • The Mad Dog Initiative, a project which aims to deliver conservation benefits to endangered species by humanely controlling domestic and feral dogs in and around Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar, and
  • Neotropical Primate Conservation in Peru, which tackles illegal wildlife trade by partnering with wildlife authorities, police, public prosecutors and grassroots organisations.

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Saying it ‘opposes the exploitation of wild animals in captivity and campaigns to keep wildlife in the wild,’ the charity that is named after the movie classic in which Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers starred, says its mission is ‘to ensure that all wild animals, whether living in captivity or in the wild, are treated with compassion and respect and are able to live their lives according to their needs.’