WASHINGTON (June 10, 2015)-On Thursday, June 11, an extraordinary group of individuals will be honored by the National Geographic Society at the 2015 Explorer Awards, presented by Rolex.
Emmanuel de Merode and Innocent Mburanumwe will accept the Rolex National Geographic Explorers of the Year award on behalf of the rangers of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in recognition of the rangers' tireless efforts to halt illegal wildlife trafficking. George Schaller, legendary conservation biologist, will receive the Hubbard Medal, National Geographic Society's highest honor, for his unwavering commitment to the well-being of the world's most endangered species. Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba, who was named National Geographic People's Choice Adventurer of the Year earlier this year, will be recognized for his solo, unsupported transatlantic expedition.
Our honorees are true leaders in research, conservation and exploration, said Gary E. Knell, president and CEO of National Geographic. They embody National Geographic's goal of inspiring and educating people to be global citizens and stewards of the planet. We salute their efforts, and we are privileged to share their stories and experiences with our worldwide audiences.
EXPLORERS OF THE YEAR
The Explorers of the Year award is bestowed on individuals whose actions, achievements and spirit personify leadership in exploration and reflect a commitment to the Society's purpose to inspire, illuminate and teach. Knell and Stewart Wicht, president and CEO of Rolex Watch USA, will recognize the Virunga National Park rangers' profound courage and continued commitment to protecting their country's natural treasures. De Merode and Mburanumwe will accept the award on behalf of the rangers.
Virunga National Park is Africa's oldest national park and a World Heritage site. It is home to all of the DRC's critically endangered mountain gorillas as well as important populations of chimpanzees, elephants and other wildlife. Virunga has been at the center of the DRC's civil wars for decades, threatened by armed militias and foreign corporate interests intent on destroying the park for profit. The ongoing conflict decimated the mountain gorilla population and caused serious economic damage to the park's surrounding communities. Virunga is now in the midst of a resurgence, thanks to the park's committed force of rangers. Today, there are about 880 mountain gorillas because of the efforts of the rangers, over 140 of whom have died while on duty protecting the park's wildlife.
De Merode is director and chief warden of Virunga National Park. In 2008, the year de Merode became director, armed militia controlled the southern portion of Virunga. De Merode negotiated with militia leaders to allow park rangers to return. Threats continued, including illegal trafficking of the park's natural resources, militia activity and foreign oil interests, and, in 2012, the park was temporarily closed to tourism. By early 2014, Virunga, led by de Merode, reopened to tourists seeking to see the DRC's mountain gorillas in their natural habitat. De Merode has a Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London.
Mburanumwe is the Southern Sector warden of Virunga National Park. His 15-year career has focused on protecting the DRC's mountain gorillas, ending forest destruction for charcoal and patrolling against militias. Mburanumwe knows every habituated gorilla in the park individually, enabling him to detect the slightest change in the gorillas' behavior that could signify disease or other forms of stress. Mburanumwe is considered the DRC's foremost expert on mountain gorillas. His work is the key to the success of protecting these animals that, in addition to being a critical species, are crucial to the economic stability of the region. Mburanumwe is a 2015 National Geographic Emerging Explorer.
THE HUBBARD MEDAL
The Hubbard Medal is named for the National Geographic Society's first president, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, and is given in recognition of a lifetime of achievement in exploration, discovery and research. Spending most of his time in the field over the past six decades in Asia, Africa and South America, George Schaller has helped protect some of the planet's most endangered species, from jaguars to giant pandas to mountain gorillas. He has written 16 books and hundreds of articles and has been instrumental in establishing more than 15 protected areas worldwide. Schaller is vice president of Panthera and a senior conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. Schaller, who has received multiple grants from National Geographic for his conservation work, was honored in 2006 with National Geographic Adventure magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award.
PEOPLE'S CHOICE ADVENTURER OF THE YEAR
The National Geographic People's Choice Adventurer of the Year is selected from a group of innovative adventurers whose extraordinary achievements in exploration, conservation, humanitarianism and adventure sports distinguished them over the past year. This year, a record number of votes - more than 521,000 - were cast on the National Geographic Adventure website, and Aleksander Doba was chosen as the winner. At the age of 67, Doba padded 7,716 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to complete the longest unsupported open-water kayak expedition ever made. The journey, which began in October 2013 in Lisbon, Portugal, and ended in April 2014 in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, took two months and almost 2,000 miles longer than expected after storms and equipment failure stranded Doba for weeks in the Bermuda Triangle. It was his second transatlantic expedition by kayak - his first crossing was between Africa and South America in 2010-11.
The National Geographic
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
WASHINGTON (June 10, 2015)-On Thursday, June 11, an extraordinary group of individuals will be honored by the National Geographic Society at the 2015 Explorer Awards, presented by Rolex.
