SCB is proud of the career achievements of its members and the outstanding contributions they make to biodiversity conservation and we honor those achievements through an official awards program. 

The SCB Europe Distinguished Service Award, or in SCB Europe called the Ilkka Hanski Award, recognizes individuals, for their distinguished service in any field associated with biodiversity conservation in Europe and whose work has furthered the mission of SCB. 

The Ilkka Hanski Memorial Award is presented every other year during the European Conference on Conservation Biology and is awarded by the ECCB Scientific Committee as well as the SCB Europe Board.

Nuria Selva (Poland & Spain). Nuria Selva is a conservation biologist and Professor at the Institute of Nature Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków. Her research deals with the impacts of global change on species, communities and ecosystems, with a particular focus on forest conservation, large carnivore ecology and management, and roads as drivers of global change. She conducted her PhD in Białowieża Forest on the role of scavenging in vertebrate communities. An important part of her work has focused on evaluating conservation actions and policies. She has advocated and provided scientific support for the protection of Białowieża Forest and launched the Roadless Initiative together with her colleagues at the SCB-Europe Policy Committee. She is a member of the IUCN/SSC Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe and the Bear Specialist Group and has served at the SCB Europe-Board of Directors.

Clive Spash (Austria). Clive Spash is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at Vienna University of Economics and Business. He is an economist who has specialised in addressing environmental problems for over forty years. He has worked on biodiversity since the early 1990s raising the role of intrinsic values, refusals to trade species or ecosystems and more generally challenges to the preference utilitarian ethics of mainstream economics. His work on plural values relating to biodiversity has included research on coral reefs, forestry and wetland ecosystems with projects funded by the World Bank, forestry Commission, a variety of government agencies (in Scotland, Australia and Norway), and various European research grants. He was a CEO’s Science Leader at the CSIRO, Australia working in the Sustainable Ecosystems Division. He served ten years as vice president and then president of the European Society for Ecological Economics, and was editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Values.

2022: Anne Magurran (Scotland) and Luigi Boitani (Italy)

2018: Atte Moilanen (Finland)