Awards Ceremony at Inter-Emirates Weekend 2019

Dr. Felicita Hornung, Acting Chair of the Ras Al Khaimaha NHG (L) and ENHG Co-Chair Nessrine Alzahlawi (R) with the Sheikh Mubarak Award trophy.

This year’s Inter-Emirates Weekend was hosted by the Dubai Natural History Group, and alongside the field trips to points of natural history interest within Sharjah and Dubai, the annual awards ceremony saw three outstanding people recognized for their work in understanding and promoting the natural history of the UAE. 

Huw Roberts and his wife, Marion

Sheikh Mubarak Award

The Sheikh Mubarak Award was instituted by His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Bin Mubarak Al Nahayan in recognition of his late father, and recognizes substantial, original contributions to knowledge of the history, natural history, culture, archaeology or paleontology of the UAE.  This year, the silver eagle went to Huw Roberts, an English instructor at UAE University who has authored and co-authored several articles on birds and other wildlife in the UAE, and is a voting member of the Emirates Birds Records Committee. An avid wildlife photographer, his web gallery boasts 1000 authoritatively-identified species that he has photographed in the UAE. He conducted a survey of Ras Al Khaimah’s mangroves, and is now completing a catalogue of the fauna on Jebel Hafeet’s west side. He is also the recipient of a grant from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund. Huw’s website can be found here, and his twitter handle is @wildlifeUAE.

Evan Jones

Bish Brown Award

The Bish Brown Award, given to someone who has made a significant contribution to promoting wider interest in the objectives of the UAE’s three natural history groups, was awarded to Evan Jones for his tireless efforts to establish and maintain a natural history group branch in Ras Al Khaimah. Despite struggling to build a committee and a core of personnel, Evan has achieved the remarkable feat of holding a program of monthly speakers for most of the past two years, with audiences numbering two to four dozen and more.    

Lifetime Membership Honoree Gary Feulner

Lifetime Membership Award

The Honorary Lifetime Membership was given to Gary Feulner, who has been the Chair of the Dubai Natural History Group for 22 years, and has also been awarded the Bish Brown Award (1998) and the Sheikh Mubarak Bin Mohamed prize (2007). Gary has explored the UAE widely over more than 30 years, observing and studying a broad range of animals, plants and natural phenomena. He is the author or co-author of definitive surveys of the wadi fish, freshwater and land snails, dragonflies and intertidal mollusks of the UAE and northern Oman, as well as the flora of the mountains of the Musandam Peninsula (the Ru'us al-Jibal). He has also published on the geology of the UAE and on discrete aspects of local climate, geomorphology and the behavior and/or ecology of selected species, and has made substantial contributions to databases for UAE reptiles and UAE butterflies. 

To read more about prior recipients of the awards, head to the ENHG Abu Dhabi website, here.