WASHINGTON 25 April 2017 (ORCNS) - A rare William T. Hornaday Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Conservation was recently awarded to HMSH Prince Dom Daniel L. Coberly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Boy Scouts of America. The Hornaday Gold Medal is a national level award that recognizes adults who render distinguished and unusual service to natural resources conservation and environmental improvement over a sustained period of at least 20 years.
Coberly was cited for his life-long personal environmental accomplishments that span five decades, numerous countries, continents, and cultures. Less than 40 Gold Medals have been presented during the past 80 years.
“From his boyhood work as a young Scout to control rainforest erosion in the Panama Canal Zone, to his Eagle Scout project to restore 30-acres of trees and shrubs for the benefit of patients at a military hospital in Germany, his life-long personal environmental ethic didn’t stop there,” said Dr. William Benson, Director of EPA’s National Health and Environmental Effects Laboratory. “His adult activities to protect children from unexploded civil war ordnance throughout the United States, his efforts to educate parents and children about the dangers of landmines in Iraq and Afghanistan, his work with Native American Tribal Affairs, his work on environmental restorations during military base closures, and his work to promote sustainability are just a few of the activities for which Dan is now recognized with this Gold Medal”.
Coberly is a senior advisor for national communication with the U.S. EPA. In 2016, he was presented BSA’s the Silver Buffalo Award for distinguished service to youth.
A retired military public affairs officer, he was inducted in the U.S. Army Public Affairs Hall of Fame in 2014. In 1997 he was named a Distinguished Eagle Scout. He also serves in the Walsingham Guard of the Religious and Military Patriarchate of St. Stephen, where he holds the honorary rank of First Marshal of the Guards. Also the Grand Master Emeritus of the Noble Company of St. Mary of Walsingham, his many honors and distinctions include the Order of Pius IX, the Legion of the Eagle, and the Imperial Teutonic Order of the Hospital of St. Mary.
The Hornaday award was named after the director and founder of the Bronx Zoo in New York, and the National Zoological Park in DC, who was credited with saving the American bison from extinction.
