[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 15]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 20684-20685]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        IN MEMORY OF CONSERVATIONISTS TRAGICALLY KILLED IN NEPAL

                                 ______
                                 

                         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

[[Page 20685]]

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, 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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