![A male Rufous Hummingbird in profile perched on the tip of a budding branch.](https://media.audubon.org/image/engagement-cards/rufous_hummingbird_boebatyapa_1200x657.jpg?width=345&height=219&auto=webp&quality=10&fit=crop&enable=upscale&blur=100)
Experience the National Audubon Society’s biggest event of the year. The glamorous Gala Dinner features an exquisite seated dinner, awards ceremony, and thrilling live auction. This year's gala takes place on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 6:30 p.m. at The Plaza Hotel in New York City.
Celebrate our 2015 award winners, Jack and Laura Dangermond, who will receive the prestigious Audubon Medal, and Spencer Beebe, who will receive the Lufkin Prize for Environmental Leadership. Proceeds from this exciting event support the National Audubon Society’s mission to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity.
About the Audubon Medal
One of the highest honors in conservation, the Audubon Medal recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of conservation and environmental protection. First awarded in 1947, recipients have since included Walt Disney, Rachel Carson, Ted Turner, Edward O. Wilson, former President Jimmy Carter, and the Rockefeller family.
This Year’s Audubon Medal Awardees: Jack and Laura Dangermond
Jack and Laura Dangermond launched Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) in 1969 with a vision of how maps and geographic sciences could promote deeper understanding of our world and enable us to design a better future. Today, that’s exactly what Esri’s innovative mapping technology is doing. The best-kept secret in conservation, Esri is enabling organizations around the globe to take on the most daunting threats to the planet. The Dangermonds have donated more than a billion dollars in geo-spatial, analytical and visualization technology to research institutions, schools and nonprofit organizations, equipping conservationists and public schools with the same GIS tools that drive the strategies of Fortune 500 companies. In 2013, the U.N named Jack Dangermond a Champion of the Earth. He has also been recognized by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, the Economist, and the National Governor’s Association and has received 13 honorary doctorates from universities around the world.
About the Lufkin Prize
The Dan W. Lufkin Prize for Environmental Leadership recognizes individuals who have dedicated their entire lives to the environment and on-the-ground conservation. Recipients receive $100,000 to help further their conservation work. The prize is named in honor of Dan W. Lufkin, a businessman who also served as Connecticut's first Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection. Mr. Lufkin’s lifelong passion for the environment has guided his generous support of numerous nonprofit organizations, including the National Audubon Society.
This Year's Lufkin Prize for Environmental Leadership Awardee: Spencer B. Beebe
Spencer Biddle Beebe’s lifelong commitment to conservation is reflected in an extraordinary legacy of achievements from the Amazon to Alaska. He is renowned for designing innovative solutions that see economics and ecology as part of a whole life support system, from debt-for-nature swaps in the Bolivian Amazon to environmental banking in the Pacific Northwest. In 1991, Beebe founded Portland-based Ecotrust, which is focused on delivering social, economic, and environmental benefit to communities in the coastal temperate rain forest bioregion of North America, "the rainforests of home."
In keeping with the idea that “the economy of nature and the ecology of man are inseparable,” Ecotrust’s achievements honor the relationship between people and place. Prior to founding Ecotrust, Beebe led The Nature Conservancy International and was founding President of Conservation International. Currently, Beebe serves as Executive Chair of Ecotrust, Chair of Ecotrust Forest Management, and leads Ecotrust’s natural capital investment initiatives in forests, food & farms, green building and social finance.
He and his wife Janie of 44 years have three grown children: Silas, Sam and Lydia.
The 2015 Gala Gallery:
Questions?
Contact Liz Okin Gabay by email at audubon@eventassociatesinc.com or by phone at 212-245-6570.
Previous Award Winners
Lufkin Prize Winners
2014 Patrick F. Noonan
2013 George Archibald
Previous Audubon Medal Award Winners
2014 Dan W. Lufkin
2013 Louis Bacon
2010 Donal C. O'Brien Jr.
2008 Richard Louv
2005 The Rockefeller Family
2004 Harriet Bullitt
2002 Edward H. Harte
2001 Michael P. Dombeck
2000 Chandler Robbins
1999 William Conway
1998 Julie Packard
1997 Hazel Wolf
1996 Dean James Parks Morton
1995 Edward O. Wilson
1994 The Honorable Jimmy Carter
1993 Chief Oren Lyons and Anita Roddick
1992 John H. Chafee
1991 Ted Turner
1990 Durward L. Allen
1989 Robert Redford
1988 President Oscar and First Lady Marguerita Arias
1987 Vladimir E. Flint
1986 John F. Seiberling
1985 Cecil D. Andrus
1984 Joseph J. Hickey
1983 Margaret Wentworth Owings
1982 C.R. "Pink" Gutermuth
1981 Richard H. Pough
1980 Margaret E. Murie
1979 Thomas L. Kimball
1978 Charles H. Callison
1977 Russell W. Peterson
1976 John B. Oakes
1975 Maurice F. Strong
1974 Tom McCall
1973 Barbara Ward (Lady Jackson, D.B.E.)
1971 Roger Tory Peterson
1969 Horace M. Albright
1968 Fairfield Osborn
1967 Stewart L. Udall
1966 A. Starker Leopold
1964 Laurance S. Rockefeller
1963 Rachel Carson
1962 William O. Douglas
1961 Clarence Cottam
1960 J.N. "Ding" Darling
1959 Olaus J. Murie
1956 Ludlow Griscom
1955 Walt Disney
1952 Louis Bromfield
1950 John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
1949 Ira N. Gabrielson
1947 Hugh H. Bennet