Air Force Base Ysterplaat public relations officer Captain Mariette Hopley yesterday became the first recipient of the Wouter van Hoven trophy, an award to honour air force members for outstanding services to environmental conservation.

Hopley was awarded the floating trophy - named for Professor Wouter van Hoven of the Centre for Wildlife Management at the University of Pretoria, who is involved in various conservation projects with the SAAF - for her management of penguin rehabilitation after the 1994 Apollo Sea and, particularly, the 1996 St Croix Island oil disasters.

Hopley undertook the St Croix project when the SA National Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) rehabilitation centre in Table View was struck by the deadly Newcastle disease.

Using an old aircraft X-ray hangar at the air base, Hopley ran an operation that - had volunteers' time and equipment and food not been donated - would have cost the air force more than R188 000. In a three-month project about 7 000 penguins were saved and returned to the sea.

At the presentation ceremony yesterday Major-General P R Muller, the Chief of Staff (Logistics) of the air force, said it was "the first time we have seen an effort that was so well-managed".

A beaming Hopley said the award was "for me the greatest privilege that anyone could receive ... I live and love nature."

However, she pointed out that the project would not have worked had it not been for the efforts of SANCCOB, the public and the air base. "I just managed the thing," she said.

The runner-up was Flight Sergeant Francois Coetzee of the Ellisras radar post, who was honoured for fixing a black eagle nest to a mountainside after it had been knocked off its perch several times.

- Willem Steenkamp, Security Writer