Never before in the history of the subcontinent have wild animals and habitats faced the kind of threats they face today. Almost everywhere you look, species like the tiger and leopard are dying. Just as dangerous is the threat to the survival of species from habitat destruction. Mines, dams, roads, urban spread, toxic contamination and even nuclear reactors threaten to degrade and even wipe out irreplaceable ecosystems.

When we contacted our Earth Heroes this year, each one suggested they were just ‘doing what they do’ and wondered why they should be especially ‘awarded’. We know different. Their achievements go beyond mere wildlife service. They represent the hope that tomorrow’s India will be populated by people who know that loving your country, means living for it and protecting it.

Lifetime Service Award
Dr. A.J.T. Johnsingh: India desperately needs the right kind of heroes. In a world of crumbling values, our children need people they can look up to. For our Lifetime Service Award, we found just such a man, whose life has been devoted to the study and protection of wildlife and wild habitats. Dr. A.J.T. Johnsingh is the quintessential wildlifer. He has been charged by elephants, has walked in tiger country and even risked death and injury from poachers in forests where he wanted to protect what others wanted to kill. He has now retired after two decades spent with the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, an institution he helped shape. One of his key contributions to conservation is that he helped train many indivuduals who now oversee Protected Areas in India and neighbouring countries.[more]

Wildlife Service Awards
Chander Singh Negi (Jolly Uncle): Universally and fondly known as ‘Jolly Uncle’, Chander Singh Negi, joined the Forest Department in Garhwal at the age of 16, over 50 years ago, as a dakwallah, or postman. He is still there today, more than a decade after he was ‘put
to pasture’ but, of course, he continues to work for the tiger, now with the Corbett Foundation. Jolly Uncle is utterly fearless. His job is to find cows that tigers kill outside the tiger reserve and get to them before villagers, with poison in bottles and anger in their hearts, do. Jolly Uncle’s are the proverbial shoulders on which researchers, forest officers and NGOs routinely stand, when doing their job. He is a friend of wild animals and part of the vital spirit of nature that we seek to protect.[more]

Gir Rescue Team: The Rescue Team of the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park works around the clock. The team comprises 20 frontline defenders of wildlife whose job it is to keep wandering lions, leopards and crocodiles away from humans. This team of foot soldiers working in the Gir East, Gir West and Sasan Wildlife Division of the Gujarat Forest Department, act as one entity in defence of lions. They help to reduce human-wildlife conflict at grave individual risk to their lives.[more]

K. Manu: An engineer and a defender of birds,
K. Manu moved to Kokkare Bellur in 1994 to help villagers protect a large pelican nesting site near their homes and fields. He is of the view that winning the cooperation of villagers wherever possible should be a key long-term strategy to protect wildlife.With close friends and supporters and a shoe-string budget, they started an organisation called Mysore Amateur Naturalists, or MAN. Today, Kokkare Bellur is one of the five most important pelican nesting sites in India. Manu’s socio-environmental strategy seems to have worked. Not only are they securing the future of the birds, but in the process the quality of health and the economic security of villagers is also on the rise.[more]

Green Teacher Award
Madhu Bhatnagar: An artist in her own right, Madhu Bhatnagar believes a child’s mind is a canvas. As the Deputy Head of The Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi, she had charted out an Environment Education Policy long before the Supreme Court so instructed. She has been working relentlessly to breathe the spirit of conservation into her students. Working with her wards, she has pioneered a whole host of campaigns including a rainwater harvesting system, zero garbage zones and grey water recycling and a very effective resistance movement among children against paint brushes using mongoose hair. She mentors the Junior Tiger Task Force, which she helped formulate. Her job, she says, is not to change the world, but to change the attitude of children to the world. [more]


Young Naturalist Awards
Vishal Prabhakar Bansod: Wildlife defender and social worker, Vishal Bansod is active in 39 villages of the Melghat Tiger Reserve. Just 24 years old, he already has an incredible 10 years of nature education and wildlife conservation work with the Nature Conservation Society, Amravati (NCSA) under his belt. Hardcore wildlifers and conservationists in Central India know Vishal to be a part of the protection landscape in this, one of India’s most critical wildlife regions. Today, he accompanies their health activists to remote tribal villages whose trust he has won and whose cooperation he enlists in the battle to save the wildlife of Vidharbha. [more]

Bharat Vaghabhai Kamaliya: He protects nesting sea turtles and has taken on poachers who have been slaughtering migratory birds around his village – Saiyad Rajpara – in the Una taluka of Junagadh district. He is also a protector of endangered whale sharks that were once mercilessly slaughtered. Bharat is just a Class IX student. And his involvement with wildlife is as recent as 2003, when the Gir Foundation organised a Samark Yatra to increase awareness of the need to protect sea turtles and migratory birds along Saurashtra’s coast. Among the thousands of students contacted was Bharat Kamaliya, who stood out because much after the Yatra ended, he continued to fight to change what he saw. With the aid of many freinds, he has explained to fishermen just how endangered our marine creatures are. His lone efforts today, have turned into a veritable movement. Migratory waterfowl are safer in Saurashtra thanks to him. He has a lifetime of wildlife service ahead of him. [more]

Wind Under The Wings Award
Indian Express
For our newly-instituted Wind Under the Wings Award, we zeroed in on the Indian Express that has built its reputation on a consistent ‘Journalism of Courage’. Their penchant for courage and investigation was in clear evidence in the shape of the incisive investigative report written by Jay Mazoomdaar in January 2005, which exposed the truth behind the death of the tigers of Sariska. Then, Shekhar Gupta, Editor, of the Indian Express asked Mazoomdaar to personally visit many more tiger reserves over a span of four months. For allowing one of their own to make a difference to wildlife protection in India, this award goes to the Indian Express, New Delhi.[more]

Special Tiger Awards
Belinda Wright: Founder and Executive Director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). She and her colleagues and with allies across the globe, she recently exposed the hideous trade in tiger, leopard and other wild animal skins being exported to Tibet. She has often risked her life working undercover against lethal foes and has actually stared at the wrong end of a gun barrel in her quest to stem the tiger bone trade. She has co-authored five books. Her writings grace books, magazines, exhibitions and scientific journals across the world. She is a dismantler of the illegal wildlife trade, a warm-hearted conservationist and a passionate champion of nature. [more]

B.K.Sharma: He is a police officer with an abiding love for wildlife. He has been a persistent investigator of wildlife crimes, following the trail of tiger skins and bones, shahtoosh, ivory and rhino horn in India and across our borders where he has worked with his counterparts in the Interpol and CITES. DIG with the Central Bureau of Investigation, his battle against organised crime has seen him apprehend some of the most dangerous criminals who had unleashed a reign of terror and had taken a vicious toll on endangered wildlife. He is one of India’s finest wildlife crime-busters.[more]

Kirat Singh: Too young even to qualify for a Young Naturalist Award, Kirat has been singled out for a special award for his unbelievable drive and ability to work doggedly towards the objective of saving tigers when they were vanishing into thin air. Anti-cracker campaigns, cleaning the Yamuna, waste management, water harvesting... have all been a part of his agenda. He was even presented with The Sri Ram School’s Prayukti Award for Lateral Thinking in 2004-05. [more]