Microbiologist Pilai Poonswad embarked on her journey to save the hornbill from extinction back in 1967 after first seeing one of the "glorious" birds.

This week she was named a Rolex laureate for "bettering humankind".

According to the selection committee, Pilai faced massive challenges in her work, which was "never easy or safe".

"She has been chased by elephants, threatened by cobras and bitten by leeches. And, to add to those difficulties, the South of Thailand - where her project is based - is undergoing violent political unrest."

The selection jury said when funding for her work was slashed following the 1997 Asian economic crisis, Pilai started her own Hornbill Family Adoption Programme to finance her conservation work.

Pilai is a professor at Mahidol University.

She has engaged rural communities in the saving of the birds and has transformed former poachers and illegal loggers in Budo-Sungai Padi, Narathiwat, into protectors of the birds and their rainforest habitat.

"Thailand has 13 of Asia's 31 species of hornbill - one on the verge of extinction, five endangered, four threatened and three vulnerable," she says.

"It is my hope that our efforts will foster more research into the complex web of life and that more Thais will learn anew what it means to live in harmony with the forest."

Awardees receive financial support to further their work. Each winner gets US$100,000 (Bt3.8 million) and a Rolex watch.

Awards are made for science and medicine, technology and innovation, exploration and discovery, the environment and cultural heritage.

This year nearly 1,700 people from 117 were in the running. It is 30 years since the first awards.

This year's other laureates are Alexandra Lavrillier, who runs a nomadic school for hunter-herders in Siberia; Brad Norman, for his "photo-ID network for whale-shark conservation"; Chanda Shroff, who revived the art of embroidery in India; and Rory Wilson, for his revolutionary electronic animal-tracking device.

Kupluthai Pungkanon

The Nation