🏆 India’s Green Oscars: Two Women, Two Species, One Extraordinary Week for Conservation
On 29 April, at a ceremony in London at the Royal Geographical Society, two Indian women walked away with what conservation circles call the Green Oscars.
Parveen Shaikh, a scientist with the Bombay Natural History Society, and Barkha Subba, a scientific adviser at the Darjeeling-based Federation of Societies for Environmental Protection, are among seven winners of the 2026 Whitley Awards — annual grants given by the UK charity Whitley Fund for Nature to grassroots conservation leaders across the Global South. The awards were presented by Princess Anne. Each winner receives £50,000 in project funding over one year.
Parveen Shaikh: Guardians of the Skimmer
Shaikh’s work centres on the Indian skimmer (Rynchops albicollis) — a riverine bird identified by its vivid orange scissor-like bill and its habit of flying low over water to catch fish. The species was once distributed widely across Southeast Asia. It now survives only in India and Bangladesh, with a few records from Nepal and Pakistan. India holds more than 90 percent of the global population — around 3,000 individuals — making the country’s rivers effectively the last refuge for the species.
The skimmer breeds on seasonal sandbars, mid-river islands that appear and disappear with the river’s flow. When Shaikh began her “Guardians of the Skimmer” initiative on the Chambal river in 2017, the local population stood at around 400 individuals. Local community members now help identify new sandbars, monitor nests, and prevent disturbance during the breeding season. With her Whitley Award, Shaikh will expand the programme to Prayagraj in the Ganga basin — where boat traffic, fishing, religious activity along the riverbank, and urban pollution all intensify pressure on nesting colonies.
At the awards ceremony, Shaikh said: “Receiving the Whitley Award gives us the chance to strengthen communities, protect more nests, and secure a future for the Indian skimmer. And perhaps, in protecting this river, we are also protecting something far more fragile: our connection to the wild.”
Barkha Subba: Salamander of Lost Time
Subba’s subject is less familiar but no less urgent. The Himalayan salamander (Tylototriton himalayanus) — a lizard-like amphibian endemic to India, Nepal, and Bhutan — breeds in the wetlands of Darjeeling’s tea estate landscape, a habitat being rapidly altered by land-use change, invasive species, and unregulated tourism. The IUCN lists the species as Vulnerable. Approximately 30 breeding sites remain locally, many outside protected areas.
Salamanders return to their natal sites to breed and lay eggs — a process called philopatry — which makes them highly vulnerable to changes in habitat and an indicator of wetland health. Subba’s project focuses on habitat restoration, removal of invasive species, screening for the chytrid fungal disease that has devastated amphibian populations worldwide, and community engagement. Her long-term goal is a transboundary wetland conservation framework extending into Nepal and Bhutan.
“Meeting a salamander feels like meeting a messenger from deep evolutionary time — a reminder of how long nature has endured and how quickly we can lose it,” Subba has said. At the ceremony she added: “As a woman belonging to an indigenous mountain community, winning a Whitley Award means both recognition of years of work on conservation and opportunity to spread this work across the Himalayan landscape.”
Two species. Two women. Both working not in conference rooms or laboratories but in rivers, wetlands, and tea gardens where the work of conservation actually happens.
🐒 Ahmedabad Counts Its Monkeys — and Asks Why There Are So Many
Ahmedabad has launched its first-ever monkey census.
Rising attacks, repeated rescue calls, and growing sightings of langurs in residential areas have prompted the city’s forest department to begin an extensive pre-census survey. Municipal Corporation areas have been divided into zones, with residential societies asked to fill a 27-point questionnaire through Google Forms — reporting troop sizes, feeding locations, nuisance levels, waste disposal issues, and movement patterns.
The census follows years of concern about a practice that officials now describe as a root cause of the problem: feeding monkeys near temples, vegetable markets, housing societies, and open grounds. What was once seen as a religious or charitable act has, authorities say, created conditions for aggression and dependency. “Once monkeys begin linking humans with food, they lose fear and become increasingly bold,” a senior official said. “That leads to attacks, home intrusions and nuisance behaviour.”
A trial census will follow the survey, testing counting methods before a full-scale exercise begins. The ultimate aim is to replace the current complaint-driven rescue model with a scientific, data-backed strategy. The Ahmedabad exercise is notable less for the monkey count itself than for what it represents: a city acknowledging, formally and with a questionnaire, that urban wildlife management cannot be reactive. It needs a baseline.
📋 Week in Brief
International Leopard Day, 3 May: IWN published a full analysis of India’s leopard crisis — 13,874 individuals counted, no national policy for those living outside protected areas. Read it here.
Rajasthan census goes nocturnal: The Chittorgarh forest department shifted its annual wildlife census to a 5pm start this week — the first time in decades — because May daytime temperatures exceeded 45°C. Read more here.
IWN Sunday Quiz: India’s bird quiz is live — 10 questions, multiple choice. Take it here.
Jobs reminder: TCF Grassland Ecologist (Kanha) closes 5 May. Full listings at the IWN Wildlife Jobs page.
Sources: Mongabay India — Parveen Shaikh, Mongabay India — Barkha Subba, Mongabay — 2026 Winners, EastMojo, The Wire
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