PSG 2024 – Special Achievement Award: Linda Elliott
Linda Elliott is the Founder, President and Center Director of the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center. She is a graduate of Kalaheo High school on Oʻahu, attended the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and holds a degree in Wildlife Biology from Arizona State University.
Special Achievement Award – in recognition of innovation and dedication to seabird conservation, rehabilitation, and education through the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center
Linda Elliott, founder and director of the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center
Linda’s dedication to wildlife began before she was ten years old. She will tell you that her earliest life-defining moment was when she saw the movie, Born Free. From that point forward Linda has pursued her passion for wildlife and conservation. Her father’s military career brought her family to Hawai‘i in 1974, sparking her interest in island wildlife and ecosystems. Linda began her wildlife conservation career at the Honolulu Zoo with reptiles, birds and mammals, successfully running the Zoo’s wildlife health center. She developed major improvements and standards for the care of captive animals at the Zoo and for a national resort corporation, including unique public-private partnerships.
Ms. Elliott began providing wildlife rehabilitation services in Hawai‘i in 1988 as the Wildlife Manager of a partnership program with State and Federal wildlife agencies. A resort sponsored this program and made available a set of unique resources to support it. However, the program ended in 1994 with a change in ownership of the resort, and this left the state without a wildlife rehabilitation center. Linda stepped into this void by founding the first dedicated wildlife rehabilitation hospital in Hawaiʻi, which broke ground in 2008 and welcomed its first patient in 2012.
In the first 10 years of the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center, she single handedly (at first) built a community of supporters, raised money for a facility, and created a valuable resource for the entire State of Hawaiʻi and other islands in the tropical Pacific. The hospital reached its 1,000th patient milestone in 2020, and its 2,000th patient milestone in 2021! Of the 70+ native taxa they care for, 90% are federally threatened, endangered, or of high conservation concern.
Lindais the only oiled wildlife response manager in the region, with over two decades of experience as an educator, supervisor, and emergency response manager. She is a leading member of an international wildlife emergency response team, participating in eighteen international rescue operations to date. As Rehabilitation Director for the world’s largest and most successful oiled penguin response in South Africa, Linda was instrumental in releasing 93% of 20,000 treated penguins. More recently, Linda was the Animal Care Manager with Focus Wildlife International rescuing nearly 3,000 oiled birds, mammals, and freshwater turtles at the Marshall Michigan oil pipeline leak on the Kalamazoo River in 2010. Linda also works on recovery and conservation in partnership with Hawai‘i and U.S. territorial governments, including translocating Laysan ducks to Kure Atoll State Wildlife Sanctuary in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and teaching wildlife response courses throughout Hawai‘i, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
The Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center has recently been part of a coordinated effort to rescue downed White Terns that cannot be returned to their own nest sites with the group Hui Manu-o-Kū, coordinate transport to the airport by volunteer drivers, care for the chicks at the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center, and then release them at the Honolulu Zoo. The long post-fledging care system of White Terns is simulated by volunteers feeding the chicks at the release site until they gain proficiency to catch prey on their own. The Manu-o-Kū (White Tern) soft release program partnership of the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center and the Honolulu Zoo was awarded the Plume Award of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Avian Scientific Advisory Group.
