Mike has spent a lifetime since he left the NCP in the world of avian breeding and behaviour and, more specifically, waterfowl conservation. In his time, he has hunted high and low for birds’ eggs (his collection is now in the American Museum of Natural History in New York). At one point he was Curator at Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust on the Severn estuary and advisor to HM The Queen on duck-breeding matters. He has criss-crossed the globe trying to save rare and endangered species, won 17 World’s First Breeding Awards and been inducted into the International Waterfowl Association’s Hall of Fame.

Notably, in 2007 he set up, and has run ever since with his wife Ali, the Sylvan Height’s Waterfowl Park and EcoCenter at Scotland Neck in North Carolina in the United States of America. Now 80 and not in great health and thus unable to travel to the UK to receive his award, he still watches birds on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, getting around on a golf cart and tractors.

Based in a farming community close to the winter home of 75,000 Tundra Swans, the Sylvan Heights centre is both a huge breeding and conservation centre as well as a beautiful bird park which is open to the public and has become a mecca for waterfowl lovers throughout North America. In 2014 Mike’s biography The Waterfowl Man written by Dale True was published in the USA to wide acclaim.

Mike Lubbock’s award is a second MBE conservation award given to an OP in recent years following that given to Michael Keigwin (86-93) in the 2017 New Year’s Honours List for his ‘Services to African Wildlife and Conservation.’ In 1998 Michael set up a project to restore elephants, crops and people in Ishasha in the southern part of the Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. Working with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, his initiative managed to reduce elephant crop raiding by 90% and drastically limit poaching.