Snow Leopard Trust, an organization based in India, recently pioneered a model of conservation which will work with communities in 12 countries to protect the snow leopard. Among other things, it will compensate herders when they lose livestock to snow leopards as a kind of insurance program. With this move, the organization hopes to reduce retaliatory killings.
Already this model has been hailed as a success and last week the project's executive director Dr. Charudutt Mishra won a Whitley Award, celebrating solutions to the biodiversity crisis.
Dr. Mishra won £100,000, and the prize money will be applied to launching the model in other countries.
Other initiatives that won included projects that will protect the red pandas, Sumatran rhinos, and Brazil’s Araucaria forest. Director of the award, Danni Parks, praised all the winners for “addressing the interconnected crises of species extinction, climate change, and social inequality.”
Maria Eriksson
