Rachel Hogan Awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth

We are absolutely delighted to announce that our director, Rachel Hogan, has been awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours list!  Rachel has devoted her life to the conservation of Cameroon’s primates, making so many sacrifices along the way, and this honour is so richly deserved. 

Her passion for gorillas began as a young child, but her dream to work with them became a reality in 2001 when she travelled to Cameroon to volunteer for AAA for three months. Just as she was getting ready to return home to Birmingham, a tiny, two-week-old gorilla arrived at the sanctuary. No one had ever successfully hand-reared such a small gorilla, and Rachel abandoned her plans to return home.

During the nearly 20 years since that time, it has been a pleasure to see Rachel grow from a shy volunteer who was focused on Nkan Daniel, into our confident director of today, responsible for more than 350 animals and 50 staff. She now works closely with government ministers, has hosted the Prime Minister of Cameroon at Mefou, and has met the President’s wife and the Secretary General of the Presidency, both of whom are very supportive of her work.

As a volunteer in early days, Rachel was filmed with Nkan Daniel for a BBC programme called Ape Hunters, but she refused to speak! She is now so confident in front of the public that her talk at the Explorers Club in New York was the first time in 150 years that the event was sold out, and she shared Shufai’s surgery in Operation Wild on the BBC. Her profile within Cameroon and internationally is becoming increasingly important in her lifelong quest to protect Cameroon’s primates.
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Many congratulations Rachel, from all our staff in Cameroon, the board of trustees, all our volunteers around the world and of course those who you work so tirelessly for … all the gorillas, chimpanzees and monkeys in your care and their cousins in the wild.

OBE stands for "Officer of the Order of the British Empire." 

But we doubt that you'll see Rachel wearing her insignia, above, while she's checking on the gorillas!