Sally Walker and Miranda Stevenson

Many of our readers have also attended some of our SAZARC meetings and had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Miranda Stevenson, a long time zoo employee in Great Britain, from keeper to curator to director and finally to Chair the British and Irish Zoo Association. Miranda has visited South Asia several times as a Resource Person for our annual SAZARC meetings.

A few weeks ago, the Director of London Zoo, David Field, invited me to a very secret retirement party for Miranda. Miranda is very personable and helpful to all and has tons of friends throughout the entire world of zoos. Last year she was awarded the OBE, England's highest award for public service. David told me not to breath a word of the party to Miranda as it was supposed to be a big surprise. He invited perhaps 200 people from all over the world, but mostly Britain and Europe and at least 150 came to the gala event. We gathered for drinks at the Reptile House of the Zoo. David told Miranda they were having dinner with a couple of people from their Council so when Miranda came in and confronted 150 people, she was REALLY surprised. By some miracle nobody had leaked the secret.

After a nice dinner, there were speeches and gifts for Miranda for her dedication to the zoo world and the changes she had effected to make it better in myriad ways. Since I had come all the way from US for this, I stayed a few days with Miranda and her husband and got to see all the congratulatory cards and gifts. Miranda is crazy about penguins and this is well known, so David enlisted a very famous cartoonist in Gt. Britain to paint a picture of Miranda with her own head and a penguin body. This went over very well! After toasts and conversation we danced to old rock until 2pm. To view an article about Miranda's work and her many accomplishments in ZOOS' PRINT with photos of her visiting Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan for SAZARC.

Report in Zoo's Print Magazine