Congratulations to a good friend and colleague on winning The Rolex Award

My good friend and colleague Sergey Bereznuk recently received some well-deserved attention when he won a Rolex Award for protecting Russia's last remaining Amur tigers in Dehli, India.

Sergey was among five other laureates, selected from 3.600 applicants.

Sergey is the Director of Phoenix, which is an International Fund for Animal Welfare partner organisation in the Russian Far East dedicated to protecting the few remaining Amur tigers.

IFAW has been working with Phoenix for more than X years now as a great team. While Phoenix works on the ground in the Russian Far East to stop poachers IFAW works in Moscow to change the rules so poachers face real punishment for their grievous crime.

Together we hope to save these precious animals.

The ceremony was great and conducted with elegance.

There were about four hundred guests at the candlelight seated dinner. A short documentary was shown about the work of each laureate, followed by the speech of each awardee.

Sergey made a short and nice speech in English.

You can read more about Sergey and his work in this national Geographic biography.

Congratulations Sergey!

--MV