Gill Memorial Medal Award (Edwin Leonard Gill 1877 - 1956)

BirdLife South Africa’s most prestigious award is the Gill Memorial Medal Award, which is awarded for outstanding lifetime contributions to ornithology (the study of birds) in southern Africa.

The inaugural award was presented to Jack Winterbottom in 1960, and the most recent recipient was Colleen Downs (2023). The list of recipients includes a very renowned group of southern Africa’s distinguished ornithologists, including Philip Clancey, Roy Siegfried, Richard Brooke, Warwick Tarboton, Richard Dean, John Cooper and Adrian Craig.

BirdLife South Africa will send out an annual notification inviting and announcing the closing date for nominations for the Gill Memorial Medal Award each year.

Enquiries can be send to isabel.human@birdlife.org.za

Procedures and Criteria

Procedures and Criteria

Any member of BirdLife South Africa can nominate a candidate and each nomination shall be seconded by at least one other member of the organisation. It is not acceptable for a person to nominate or second their own candidacy. Nominations shall include an appropriate motivation, the candidate’s CV, and a list of the candidate’s relevant achievements, which most frequently shall be in the form of publications.

Members of the Selection Committee can nominate candidates.

The Chairperson of the Selection Committee shall be the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the BirdLife South Africa.

If a member of the Selection Committee is nominated for the award, that member shall step down from deliberations in such cases.

All nominations shall be sent to the Human Resources and Governance Manager of BirdLife South Africa. All nominations shall be received by the Human Resources and Governance Manager.

The Selection Committee shall comprise of the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of BirdLife South Africa, the Chief Executive Officer of BirdLife South Africa, and the Director of the FitzPatrick Institute.

The members of the Selection Committee shall vote on the nominations.

  • Where there is a single nomination, the candidate must be positively supported by two-thirds or more of the Selection Committee members.
  • Where two candidates are nominated, the one supported by two-thirds or more of the Selection Committee members shall receive the award.
  • Where more than two candidates are nominated, voting shall have several iterations whereby the lowest scoring candidate/s is/are eliminated after each iteration until only two candidates remain for the final poll.
  • The members of the Selection Committee may abstain from voting for one or more candidates at any stage.
  • In all cases, the winning candidate must be positively supported by at least two-thirds of the Selection Committee.
  • The Chairperson of the Selection Committee shall have a deciding vote where necessary.
  • It follows that the medal shall not be awarded if the nomination/s fail to receive the requisite support.
  • In exceptional circumstances, the Selection Committee may decide to award medals to both of the top two scoring candidates. In such cases, one award shall be made in that year and the other in the following year. The Chairperson of the Selection Committee shall advise the Selection Committee members of this unusual option at the time of the poll of the final two candidates.

Recipients of the Gill Memorial Medal Award

  • 1960 – Jack Winterbottom*
  • 1964 – Gerry J Broekhuysen*
  • 1966 – Jack Skead*
  • 1970 – Pat Hall*
  • 1972 – Phillip Alexander Clancey*
  • 1975 – Gordon L Maclean*
  • 1976 – W Roy Siegfried
  • 1980 – Con Benson*
  • 1984 – Michael P Stuart “Miles” Irwin*
  • 1985 – Mary K “Bunty” Rowan*
  • 1988 – Richard K Brooke*
  • 1992 – Ken Newman*
  • 1996 – Warwick R Tarboton
  • 1998 – Terry Oatley*
  • 2008 – Ian Sinclair
  • 2009 – William Richard John Dean*
  • 2010 – Alan Charles Kemp
  • 2011 – Peter Roy Barry Steyn*
  • 2012 – John Cooper
  • 2013 – Robert James Minchin Crawford
  • 2014 – Adrian Craig
  • 2016 – Philip Anthony Richard Hockey*
  • 2017 – Leslie Gordon Underhill
  • 2019 – Claire Spottiswoode
  • 2021 – David George Allan (Citation)
  • 2022 – Peter Ryan (Citation)
  • 2023 – Colleen Downs (Citation)

* Denotes deceased

The deliberations of the Selection Committee shall be treated as confidential.

The results shall be forwarded by the Chairperson of the Selection Committee/Human Resources and Governance Manager to the Board of Directors of BirdLife South Africa for approval.

The Chairperson of the Board of Directors shall inform the necessary parties of the outcome and, where positive, shall award the medal at the next Annual General Meeting of the organisation, which determines the year of the award.

The recipient shall give a Gill Memorial Medal Address at the Annual General Meeting.

The travel and accommodation costs of the recipient’s attendance at the Annual General Meeting shall be paid by the organisation.

The award shall be reported in the organisation’s publications and the Chairperson of the Selection Committee shall provide an appropriate biographical account of the recipient.

The content of the Gill Memorial Medal Address shall be published, either in full or in an abbreviated form, in at least one of the organisation’s publications (Ostrich and African Birdlife). The final decision in this regard shall lie with the editors of these publications, as guided by the Chief Executive Officer of the organisation.

For more information, please contact Isabel Human at BirdLife South Africa on (+)27 (0)11 789 1122 or email isabel.human@birdlife.org.za