Geographical

Official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)

2024 Whitley Awards for conservation leaders – winners announced

7 minutes

India’s Dr Purnima Devi Barman receives the 2024 Whitley Gold Award for her work conserving the greater adjutant stork

Each year, the Whitley Awards recognises leaders in the conservation space from all around the world. This year’s winners are working to save some of the world’s most fragile ecosystems in India, Brazil, Bhutan, Papua New Guinea, Guyana, Cameroon and Nepal.

The winner of the Gold Award is Dr Purnima Devi Barman who will receive £100,000 for galvanising a movement of more than ten thousand local women to save the greater adjutant stork and its wetlands habit in Assam. The wildlife biologist has transformed the outlook for the scavenger bird and the local women, known as ‘stork sisters’, who have become conservation leaders.

For details on all the winners, see the images below:

Dr Purnima Devi Barman

‘Hargila were always misunderstood and treated as a bad omen or a disease carrier. If I didn’t do something, we were going to lose this bird forever. So, I made it my mission to save them’

With a wingspan of 2.4 metres, the greater adjutant stork can reach 1.2 metres in height. A vital pillar of Assam’s wetlands it has historically been reviled by villagers who viewed it as unsanitary and would cut trees where it nested. Once found across southern Asia and mainland southeast Asia, the greater adjutant population slumped to just 1 percent of historic numbers.
Gold award winner Purnima’s army of ‘stork sisters’ have had real success in their conservation work. Nests increased to 250 in 2021 from just 27 in 2007 in one nesting colony in Kamrup District in northeast Assam which has since been recognised as an Important Bird Area. The project has rescued more than 500 Greater Adjutant chicks that fell from nests. The Hargila Army also planted 45,000 saplings near the stork nesting trees and wetland areas to increase nesting habitat.
A scavenger of carrion, scraps and refuse, storks have a preference for landfills, adding to their bad reputation.
Purnima’s awareness activities quickly expanded to include producing textiles with the motifs of greater adjutants.
Outreach also extended to schools. In one campaign, known as ‘village-to-village’, Purnima and the stork sisters make surprise visits to villages to run impromptu field visits with locals that can last all day.
Purnima now aims to more than double the global population of the bird to 5,000 as she ratchets up her campaigning – which until now has mainly spread by word of mouth – with her female ‘Hargila Army’ of stork sisters. Their contribution ‘extends beyond merely safeguarding the bird’, according to Purnima, as it ’empowers thousands of women, enhancing their livelihoods and catalysing social change within villages as women emerge as conservation leaders’.

Naomi Longa

‘It is important to work with the local communities and women because they possess deep connections and traditional knowledge of the marine ecosystem.’

Biologist and co-director of NGO, Sea Women of Melanesia, Naomi Longa, is working to create a network of marine protected areas with local Indigenous women in Kimbe Bay, a globally significant marine ecosystem within the Coral Triangle that is threatened by climate change, overfishing and habitat destruction.
Kimbe Bay lies in the West New Britain Province of the southwestern Pacific country and is home to reef fish ranging from pygmy seahorses to whale sharks. Internationally recognized as a ‘hope spot’ within the Coral Triangle, it counts 900 species of coral reef fish and some of the world’s most picturesque dive sites, making it a popular tourist destination. Naomi’s women-led conservation model will creates a potential blueprint for the region.

Aristide Kamla

‘Giant Salvinia forms a thick carpet on top of the water surface that prevents the manatee from coming to the surface to breathe. Manatees need to surface every five minutes.’

Cameroon’s Aristide Kamla, the country’s foremost expert in manatees, is saving African manatee habitat from invasive freshwater ferns which have blanketed the surface of Lake Ossa. Using methods of biological control he is restoring manatee habitat and has trained a network of fishers to report sightings of the elusive marine mammal.
Aristide and his team used biological control to clear most of the Salvinia molesta plant species from Lake Ossa, one of Cameroon’s largest lakes and a designated wildlife reserve. Introducing a natural predator, the salvinia weevil, they shrank the invasive weed back by more than 70 per cent. Aristide is now working to identify the source of the nutrient pollution that fuelled the outbreak which covered half the lake’s surface in 2021.

Fernanda Abra

‘The Brazilian government is really interested in the Amazon’s preservation and from the perspective of road networks, we are very close to implementing the culture of sustainable infrastructure for wildlife in Brazil.’

Fernanda Abra worked with the Waimiri-Atroari people to build low-cost canopy bridges over the BR-174 highway in the Amazon rainforest. This pioneering work is restoring connectivity for tree-dwelling mammals and protecting them from road collisions. The researcher plans to scale up to build bridges across the world’s most biodiverse country.
Crafting a canopy bridge. Fernanda plans to promote the use of the canopy bridges to benefit endangered primates, such as the Guiana spider monkey and other mammals, across the world’s most biodiverse country by first expanding her work to one of the Amazon’s most deforested areas.
Under the Reconecta Project, each canopy bridge is monitored with two camera traps, recording the
numbers of animals approaching, crossing, or avoiding the bridges. The team recorded 500 crossings
over an 11-month period, a number that’s expected to rise as mammals get used to them.
A canopy bridge above the BR-174 highway. Forty percent of primate species are endangered in Brazil with fragmentation and road accidents among the main threats they face. Brazil has the fourth-largest road network in the world. President Lula last year unveiled a 1 trillion reais (£156 billion) spending programme to boost infrastructure, expected to include the construction of new highways.

Kuenzang Dorji

‘The beautiful golden langur is Endangered; the numbers are decreasing as they constantly come into contact with anthropogenic threats.’

Bhutan’s Kuenzang Dorji, a wildlife biologist, is ‘restoring harmony’ between people and primates – local farmers and endangered Gee’s golden langurs. Traditionally considered good omens, the monkeys are now raiding crops as climate change drives a shift in their behaviour. Kuenzang will train citizen scientists in how to collect primate data that supports long term monitoring in the ecologically fragile Himalayan Ranges. Image: Pema Dorji
Forests cover about 71 percent of Bhutan’s land area, however changing weather patterns have disrupted the seasonal cycles of the trees whose leaves the monkeys rely on for food.

Leroy Ignacio

‘This bird has created a movement in conservation in the Rupununi.’

Guyana’s Leroy Ignacio, a conservationist and Indigenous Makushi, is stepping up efforts to protect the endangered red siskin songbird as Guyana, the world’s fastest growing economy, navigates unprecedented change. Leroy is leading his team in expanding a conservation zone that five indigenous communities created on their land to protect the small finch. Image: Chung Liu

Raju Acharya

‘This bird has a special role to maintain ecological balance and they are also related with the society and culture.’

Nepal’s Raju Acharya spearheaded a 10-year government plan to protect owls that harnesses the proactive participation of communities in central Nepal, home to ten ethnic groups. The country’s leading owl specialist, Raju is bolstering protection in central Nepal, where 19 of the country’s 23 owl species are found. Image: Roshan Giri
In Nepal, threats to the owls are significant: the birds are the subject of an illicit trade in central Nepal, with 1,500 owls hunted or traded each year. The region, which borders China and India, is home to 2.4 million people from ten ethnic groups which co-exist harmoniously but which hold contrasting views on whether the owls represent good or bad omens. Some people associate them with death, while in other areas, owl feathers are regarded as sacred objects that can ward off evil.
Raju’s project aims to build on Nepal’s success in conservation which has harnessed the proactive participation of communities. He aims to foster collaboration between the ethnic groups to foster broader understanding of owls to reduce the use of catapults, discourage the consumption of owl meat and advocate for the adherence to the government regulations which protect the birds.

The Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) is a UK charity supporting grassroots conservation leaders in the Global South. WFN’s flagship prizes – Whitley Awards – are presented by charity Patron, HRH The Princess Royal, at a prestigious annual ceremony in London at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). Winners receive funding, training, and profile boost, including short films narrated by WFN Ambassador Sir David Attenborough.

Find out more about the awards and all of the 2024 winners here.