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Indianapolis Prize recipient Borboroglu to speak at DePauw
Pablo Garcia Borboroglu, penguin conservationist and the 2023 recipient of the Indianapolis Prize — the world’s leading award for animal conservation — will speak at DePauw University on Thursday, Sept. 28.
The event will take place at 11:30 a.m. in the ballroom of the Memorial Student Union. Lunch will be served with vegetarian and vegan options.
This event is free and open to the public.
Borboroglu is a protector of ocean and coastal habitats for penguins in several countries including Argentina. He works to improve penguin colony management through the creation of large, protected areas, including 32 million acres of ocean and coastal habitat.
He is the founder and leader of the Global Penguin Society, an international conservation coalition for the world’s penguin species. Borboroglu is the co-founder and co-chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Penguin Specialist Group, which helps to assess the conservation status and advance international penguin conservation action. He has been instrumental in creating protected wildlife areas in Argentina and implementing conservation strategies in several countries.
In the same year that he founded Global Penguin Society, Borboroglu discovered only six breeding pairs of penguins at the El Pedral colony on the eastern coast of Argentina. After successfully designating that area as a wildlife refuge and reducing human impacts, the area is now home to 4,000 pairs.
Borboroglu also led efforts to create “Blue Patagonia” — a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve — which protects 40 percent of the global population of Magellanic penguins and the most biodiverse area of Argentina. Home to 67 species of animals, more than 120 species of birds and nearly 200 species of marine invertebrates, this is Argentina’s largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, encompassing 200 miles of coastline and 7.6 million acres of land and ocean.
In total, Borboroglu has coordinated the development of management plans for eight protected areas since 1998 in Chile and Argentina. In the creation of these plans, he focuses not only on penguins, but also on supporting local communities. Protected areas are drivers of ecotourism and sustainable development, resulting in job creation.
Borboroglu is also dedicated to educating the next generation. His Global Penguin Society Program has reached more than 200,000 students and community members across Latin American nations. Efforts include leading field visits for 7,000 students who live near penguin colonies as well as the creation of free books and educational material in both English and Spanish.
Borboroglu is the ninth winner of the Indianapolis Prize. Created in 2006 and awarded on a biennial basis, the award recognizes and rewards conservationists who have achieved major victories in advancing the sustainability of an animal species or group of species.
Recipients receive $250,000, the largest international amount awarded for the successful conservation of endangered or threatened species. Previous winners include George Archibald, George Schaller, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Steven Amstrup, Patricia C. Wright, Carl Jones, Russ Mittermeier and Amanda Vincent.
In order to help plan sustainably for the event, anyone interested in attending is asked to RSVP to envfellows@depauw.edu or 658-4071. RSVPs are encouraged, but not required, to attend.