Bird park co-founder receives medal from king of England

SCOTLAND NECK — A native Briton’s lifelong service to the cause of protecting wildlife was honored Tuesday with one of Great Britain’s most prestigious honors.

Mike Lubbock, co-founder of Sylvan Heights Bird Park in Scotland Neck, received the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire medal from one of King Charles III’s emissaries in a ceremony attended by about 200 invitees, at the park that has become both a staple of Eastern North Carolina tourism and a nerve center for the study and preservation of avian life.

Lubbock, 80, was honored for his long career devoted to the breeding, care and global conservation of waterfowl. Health concerns now limit the once-peripatetic Lubbock’s ability to travel, so in lieu of a Buckingham Palace presentation, the MBE was brought across the Atlantic to him at Toad Hall, a pavilion on the Sylvan Heights campus.

Britain’s Deputy Consul General for the U.S. East Coast region, Colin Gray, in presenting the medal, saluted Lubbock’s “more than 60 years of commitment to global wildlife conservation, preservation, protection and growth. Six continents have been graced by Mike’s expertise, by his dedication.”

Gray also touted the educational efforts made possible by Lubbock’s work.

“Your legacy, your lasting commitment to ensuring that others can learn the importance of protecting our natural habitats, our environment,” Gray noted, “this is an incredibly impressive facility, and befitting of an incredibly impressive man who has dedicated so much, over so long, to so much.”

Amid a series of thank yous to those who’ve helped him over the years, Lubbock credited his wife, Ali, Sylvan Heights’ co-founder, for much of his success. “She’s stuck with me through hard, scary and good times. I may be the ‘bird brain,’ but she has held everything together,” he said.

Scotland Neck Mayor Eddie Braxton praised Sylvan Heights’ impact on the small Halifax County town: “What Sylvan Heights has brought to Scotland Neck is, we were already an outdoor paradise, but now we have an outdoor paradise that brings in 70,000 people [a year] to Scotland Neck.”

Braxton spoke of the bird park with pride at Tuesday’s ceremony.

“I can go to Rocky Mount and find somebody that hasn’t heard about Sylvan Heights,” Braxton said. “And I say, ‘Listen, you’ve got to come.’”

National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore thanked Lubbock for opening up Sylvan Heights for The Photo Ark, an 18-year project led by Sartore to capture photos of every species living in zoos and sanctuaries across the world, with an eye toward inspiring efforts to save wildlife.

“The goal is to show everything in human care around the world, all the species, to show what biodiversity looks like at this point in time before society decides to throw half of it away to extinction eventually,” Sartore said.

“I can honestly say in 800 or so facilities around the world, I’ve never seen happier animals anywhere,” he added.

Family friend Beltran de Ceballos, a conservationist and founder of a nature preserve in Spain, credited Lubbock with helping bring back the white-faced duck, which had declined to near-extinction in Spain, with only 30 or so individuals decades ago, but which now numbers in the thousands in the wild. “You are to ‘blame,’” he joked.

After the ceremony, Lubbock said the honor was “pretty neat. I’m impressed at how many people came to honor me from all over the world. … I didn’t know I impressed that many people.”

Lubbock said his mother instilled in him a love of nature and learning at an early age. At 17, his father got him an internship at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, England, where he later became curator and director of aviculture.

Still, his career in science and wildlife preservation could have gone in another direction. In the early 1960s, he was a dancer on a British television show, “Discs a Go-Go,” which he described as being “similar to ‘American Bandstand’ in this country.”

“I was making [the equivalent of] $250 a day,” Lubbock said. “I was making more money in a day than I did in a whole week at Slimbridge.”

His love of nature won out, however.

“I remembered my father’s opinion,” he said. “He told me, ‘If you have a passion and you follow that passion, you won’t get rich but you’ll be an expert in your field.’”

His father died shortly after giving that advice, but Lubbock persevered in his passion.

He first lived in the United States from 1969-73, raising and managing waterfowl in Oyster Bay, N.Y., on Long Island. A tropical illness contracted during an African expedition forced him to return to Great Britain for treatment, and he stayed nine years, eventually overseeing the queen’s bird collection at Buckingham Palace.

He returned to the United States in 1982, living and working in Alabama and later in the Western North Carolina town of Sylva, where Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Center was founded. After his partner in that operation died, the Lubbocks’ friends “Toad” Herring and Hannah Herring made land available behind their Scotland Neck home, and he relocated his work to Halifax County, he said.

Opened in Scotland Neck in 2006 as Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park, the park is home to more than 2,000 birds from six continents. It conducts education and conservation programs for some of the world’s rarest birds. Lubbock’s son, Brent, now provides much of its day-to-day leadership as director of operations and development.

Of the future of his beloved fowl territory, Lubbock said, “I’m just hoping we’ll continue our work. I’ve backed off some, but we have a good team and I’m hoping we can continue to grow and continue to do the good things we do.”

Lubbock’s life story and work is recounted in the book “The Waterfowl Man of Sylvan Heights: Mike Lubbock’s Worldwide Quest to Save Waterfowl.”

Established in 1917 by King George V, the MBE recognizes “achievement or service in and to the community which is outstanding in its field and has delivered sustained and real impact which stands out as an example to others,” according to the British government website, gov.uk.

Sylvan Heights Bird Park is open to visitors Tuesday through Sunday. For more information, visit https://www.shwpark.com.