About:

• He was presented the 100,000 pounds Whitley Gold Award from UK wildlife conservation charity Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN), which supports grassroots conservation leaders.
• The award is geared towards enabling the “ground-breaking” snow leopard conservationist to replicate ethical community engagement on every continent.
• The conservationist’s pioneering approach has been named an “outstanding conservation practice” by the UN Biodiversity Conference, in recognition that collective, locally-led conservation is essential to realising government ambition of protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030.
• He established India’s first community-based initiatives to save the endangered species of snow leopards.
  • These include innovative livestock insurance programmes to boost income and discourage retaliatory killings, and locally-managed wildlife reserves on community land.
• Winning his original Whitley Award in 2005, and several follow-on grants from WFN since, his team currently work directly with local people across nearly 60,000 sq. miles in some of the world’s most extreme environments.
  • An estimated 6,500 wild snow leopards remain, prowling the high mountains and plateaus of 12 countries including India, Russia, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and Mongolia.