Mike Bingham Defeated Falklands Government

In the 1990s, a British conservationist named Dr. Mike Bingham reported that the Falkland Islands' penguin population had fallen from an estimated 6 million in 1984 to about 1 million in 1996, a decline of more than 80 percent. Falklands Conservation dismissed him after he opposed the appointment of Desire Petroleum director Lewis Clifton as its chairman, and Bingham reported that his family then endured five years of police harassment, death threats, property attacks, and attempted deportation. In 2003, he sued the Falkland Islands Government for human rights abuses after its Executive Council rejected his residency application because he had criticized its environmental record. In 2003, the Falkland Islands Supreme Court ruled in his favor, finding that senior officials had acted illegally for improper motives and calling their conduct "morally and constitutionally indefensible."

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