Wildlife Trust's Raman Sukumar and Jon Paul Rodriguez Win Whitley-Laing Foundation's "Green Oscars"

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Wildlife Trust's Raman Sukumar and Jon Paul Rodriguez Win Whitley-Laing Foundation's "Green Oscars"

NEW YORK, PALISADES, Mar. 18 -/E-Wire/-- The endangered Asian elephant took a step closer to recovery March 14th when ecologist Dr. Raman Sukumar won the Whitley Gold Award of Â£50,000 at the annual Whitley Awards ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London. The Awards were presented by Princess Anne, patron of the Whitley-Laing Foundation. The Whitley Awards are among the most prestigious in wildlife conservation and popularly know as the "Green Oscars" (www.whitley-award.org).

Dr. Sukumar, 47, has dedicated his life to saving the Asian elephant. He is a Program Leader for Wildlife Trust, who has supported his work since 1994, and Director of the Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre in Bangalore, in southern India.

Wildlife Trust is an international conservation science organization that partners with local scientists and educators worldwide on innovative solutions to save threatened wild species and their habitats (www.wildlifetrust.org).

The award funds will help Dr. Sukumar provide support to local farmers to mitigate the impacts of elephants on their lands as well as supporting his field research team who act as a "watchdog" â identifying threats such as poaching for ivory and monitoring the health of the elephant population. Some 200 people a year are killed by elephants on the move. Dr. Sukumar's innovative work in human-wildlife conflict includes experimenting with fence-designs around village perimeters, in order to create elephant corridors.

Another Wildlife Trust Program Leader, Dr. Jon Paul Rodriguez, was the winner of the Whitley Award for Birdlife Conservation. Dr. Rodriguez is the founder of Provita, which began fifteen years ago by concentrating on threatened species and their habitats, such as the yellow-shouldered parrot on Margarita Island, off the northeast coast of Venezuela. The main threats were the capture of nestlings for the pet trade and destruction of the nesting habitat by sand mining operations. Provita's program has been highly successful and a recent survey revealed that the population had increased from 750 birds in 1989 to 2,400 birds today.

In wider terms, Dr. Rodriguez has made Provita a leader in conservation of threatened species and habitats. It plans to create Venezuela's first Integrated Conservation and Development Centre by 2004. This should provide a blue print for further Centres elsewhere in Venezuela â a country rich in biodiversity but currently lacking sufficient human and financial resources to effectively conserve and sustain its species and habitats.

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http://www.wildlifetrust.org

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