Indian wins Green Oscar for conservation work

www.expressindia.com H.S. Rao (Press Trust of India)

London, March 14: Founder-Director of the Bangalore-based Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre Professor Raman Sukumar has won the Whitley Golden award, the most prestigious international award in the field of environment conservation, for his work in saving endangered Asian elephants.

Sukumar received the award popularly known as the "Green Oscar" along with a cash prize of 50,000 pounds from Princess Anne at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday night.

This is the fourth year in succession that an Indian has bagged the award. Last year, a Pune scientist, Dr Anand Karve won the award for developing a technique to produce clean fuel from sugarcane waste.

In 2001, Vivek Menon, Chief of the Wildlife Trust of India, was chosen for the award for his fight against poaching of elephants. In 2000, Gargi Banerji, a botanist, won the golden award for work in conserving medicinal plants in Himachal Pradesh.

After receiving the award, Sukumar said he planned to spend the cash prize to provide support to local farmers to mitigate the impact of elephants on their lands as well as to help his field research team which acts as a "watchdog"—identifying threats such as poaching for ivory and monitoring the health of the elephant population.

The Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre, founded by Sukumar works closely with the government's project elephant. His area of operation is the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu where there are 8,000 elephants in the wild, the largest concentration in the world.

He said it offered the best opportunity of ensuring the long-term survival of the species.

Sukumar said his work dealt with three main problems—destruction and fragmentation of the elephant's habitat as a result of development projects; conflict between elephants and humans; and reduction of the herds by poaching.

To provide a safe habitat to the pachyderms, Sukumar carried out surveys and sought to establish protected corridors, so that elephant herds could move from one area to another. To prevent conflict, he experimented with forms of fencing and sought to get the co-operation of villagers in schemes to keep the animals away from crops and human habitation. He coordinated with the wild life authorities to combat poaching.

Others who received cash awards of 25,000 pounds each included Jon Paul Rodriguez of Venezuela for his work on saving yellow-shouldered parrot in Venezuela, Victor Vera of Paraguay for his conservation work in the Paraguayan Atlantic forest, John Waithaka of Kenya for developing community-based eco-tourism business, Gregor Maclennan of Peru, for helping local people in the Peruvian rainforests and Dale Lewis of Zambia, for converting poachers into skilful farmers.

At the award ceremony, Edward Whitley, the founder of the Whitley awards, described Sukumar as "a truly exceptional person, who most probably knows more about elephants than anyone else in the world and has devoted his professional life to their survival."