Press Release
May 31, 2017

Senate commends Filipina for winning international environmental award

The Senate adopted a resolution today commending a Filipina conservationist who won an international environmental award for partnering with prisoners to protect the critically endangered Philippine cockatoo or Katala.

Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, who introduced Senate Resolution 387, said Indira Lacerna-Widmann was one of six recipients of the 2017 Whitley Awards presented by Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal also known as Princess Anne, at the Royal Geographical Society in London, England last May 18.

He said Widmann, who was the chief operating officer of the Katala Foundation, was selected from a pool of 166 applicants from around the globe. She was the third Filipino to be the honored by the Whitley Award.

Dubbed as the Green Oscars of the Oscars for the environmental awards and considered as one of the most prestigious of conservation prizes, the Whitley Award is an annual recognition of the Whitley Fund for Nature to honor exceptional nature conservationists from the developing world.

"Widmann was cited for her invaluable work in protecting the critically endangered Katala by partnering with former poachers of the fowl and prisoners of the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm whom she educated and trained in the wildlife wardens for the Palawan fowls," Zubiri said.

"By being conferred the conservation prize, Widmann has shown to the world the passionate spirit of the Filipino and what a Filipino can achieve when he or she focuses his or her heart and mind to a particular and noble purpose," he added.

Widmann had established the Philippine Cockatoo Conservation Project in 1998 in Rasa Island, Municipality of Narra, Palawan. She has Master of Science in Environmental Studies degree from the University of the Philippines in Los Baños and a diploma degree in Conservation Education from the Durell Institute of Conservation and Ecology in the University of Kent Canterbury in the United Kingdom.

News Latest News Feed