[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 124 (Thursday, September 28, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1891-E1892]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IN MEMORY OF CONSERVATIONISTS TRAGICALLY KILLED IN NEPAL
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HON. E. CLAY SHAW, JR.
of florida
in the house of representatives
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Mingma Norbu
Sherpa and Matthew Preece, two outstanding conservationists at World
Wildlife Fund, WWF, in the United States, and others who were killed in
a tragic helicopter crash in Nepal on Saturday, September 23. The
accident claimed 24 lives, including other WWF conservation leaders and
senior government officials from the United States, United Kingdom,
Finland and Nepal and four crew members. Ms. Margaret Alexander and Dr.
Bijnan Acharya of the USAID mission in Nepal are among the deceased.
The cause of the crash is unknown. Bad weather in the area may have
been a contributing factor.
The group was returning from a celebration of a conservation success
story that took place in the rugged, far-east mountains of Nepal. The
Nepali government hosted the event in Ghunsa to turn over conservation
stewardship of wildlife and habitats on the slopes of Kanchenjunga--the
world's third highest mountain--to a coalition of local communities.
The park, which is home to globally endangered species such as the snow
leopard, now will be managed by the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area
Management Council. WWF was instrumental in the decision and will work
on its implementation for the next five years. USAID provides funding
for the project.
Mingma Sherpa directed WWF's work in the Eastern Himalayas. Born and
raised in the foothills of Mt. Everest, Mr. Sherpa represented the best
of a new breed of conservationist. As an early pioneer of conservation
efforts in his native Nepal, and for more than 15 years at WWF in the
United States, Mingma Sherpa dedicated his life to the practice of what
he called ``conservation with a human face.''
A protege of Sir Edmund Hillary, who mentored him after his father
died in a mountaineering accident on Mt. Everest in 1971,
[[Page E1892]]
Mingma was the first Sherpa to become chief warden of Mt. Everest
National Park. He was also one of the founders of the WWF-funded
Annapurna Conservation Area Project--then a new experiment in
community-based conservation that has since become a model for
conservation around the world.
Carter Roberts, President and CEO of WWF-US said this week, ``Mingma
Sherpa's quiet, unassuming modesty made it easy to forget that he
helped to point the way for the rest of us to follow. He was a hero to
me and to many others in the conservation field. He dedicated his life
to the idea people and nature could, and should, co-exist. His death is
a tremendous loss.''
Born on October 31, 1955, in the small mountain village of Kunde,
Mingma was one of the first students to graduate from the village
school system created by Hillary, who had scaled Everest two years
earlier. Hillary took an immediate interest in the boy and in 1972, a
year after Mingma's father died, invited him to participate in a
school-building project. It was to be a transformative experience--and
one that led to a close, life-long friendship with ``Sir Ed,'' as
Hillary was known among the Sherpas.
Attending Lincoln College in Christchurch, New Zealand, on a
scholarship received with Hillary's help, Mingma obtained a B.A. in
forestry and park management and returned to Nepal as a junior ranger
at Mt. Everest's Sagarmatha National Park.
Tensions between park management and the sherpas living in the area
were running high at the time because of community resentment over what
were seen as arbitrary restrictions on tree cutting and other
traditional activities. So successful was Mingma in resolving these
disputes, through solutions that gave the community incentives to
conserve the park, that he was named chief warden six months later.
It turned into one of the earliest experiments in what later would
become known as ``community-based conservation'' and it worked so well
that in 1985, after another sojourn abroad to obtain a Masters degree
in resource management from the University of Manitoba, Mingma was
picked to help create the Annapurna project that would later become the
textbook model for community-based conservation.
He joined WWF in 1989, first as director of WWF Nepal's Himalayan
Program and later as chief country representative in Nepal and Bhutan.
In 1998, he moved to the Washington, DC headquarters of WWF-US to
oversee all of the organization's conservation work in the Eastern
Himalayas.
In ``Sir Edmund Hillary and the People of Everest,'' author Cynthia
Russ Ramsay would later write that, of all of ``Hillary's students''--
many of whom went on to become doctors, lawyers, teachers and
businessmen--Mingma ``more than anyone else embodies the virtues of
doing things the Hillary way,'' having taken his mentor's compassionate
vision applied it to many ``other remote areas of the world.''
Although he received international recognition for his work--the
Gorkha Dhaksin Bhahu medal from the King of Nepal and the Order of the
Golden Ark Award from Prince Bernard of the Netherlands--Mingma was
forever self-effacing about his accomplishments, preferring to give
credit to others. He could not escape fame in his native Nepal,
however, where villagers would line the streets to applaud and cheer
him whenever he returned for a visit.
He is survived by his wife Phurba Sona Sherpa, his daughter Dawa
Phuti Sherpa and son Tenzing Norbu Sherpa, all of Falls Church,
Virginia.
Mingma was one of seven WWF staff killed in the helicopter crash.
Mathew Preece, a very promising young conservation professional from
Utah, also died in the accident. Mr. Preece was a new Program Officer
at WWF headquarters in Washington. He only joined WWF's Eastern
Himalayas team four months ago and was thrilled to be making his first
trip to the region. Matt spent five years working on domestic and
international issues for other non-profit organizations and lived in
India, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and the Dominican
Republic. He obtained graduate degrees in 2004 from Brandeis University
in Sustainable International Development and in 1999 from Vanderbilt
University in Environmental Science. While in school, Matt helped build
houses with Habitat for Humanity in California and spent a month in
Washington, DC as an advisor to the National Youth Leadership Forum.
Matthew Preece fit more into his 31 years than most people do in an
entire lifetime. He is an inspiration to young people around the world,
and our hearts go out to his parents, three sisters, and a brother.
The five other WWF staffers who were tragically killed are: Dr. Jill
Bowling, Conservation Director for WWF-UK; Jennifer Headley, WWF-UK's
Coordinator for Nepal/South Asia Program; Dr. Chandra Prasad Gurung,
Country Representative for WWF Nepal; Dr. Harka Gurung, Advisor to WWF
Nepal; and Yeshi Choden Lama, Senior Program Officer for WWF Nepal.
Several senior Nepali government officials also perished in the
crash. They are: Mr. Gopai Rai, Nepal Minister of State Forests and
Soil Conservation; Dr. Damodar Parajuli, the Acting Secretary, Ministry
of State of Forests and Soil Conservation; Mr. Narayan Poudel, Director
General of Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation; and
Mr. Sharad Rai, Director General of Department of Forests.
On behalf of the 125 members of the International Conservation
Caucus, I want to express our deepest sympathies to the families,
friends, and colleagues of the conservationists and public servants who
were lost to us. They were on a noble mission. All of them will be
missed by people who care deeply as I do about protecting wildlife and
wild places.
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