IWN Report — Sunday, 27 September 2026

The Wildlife Conservation Trust closed its four-day Annual Review Meet in the Maharashtra gateway village of Sillari, on the Nagpur side of Pench Tiger Reserve, by handing out its top staff honour for heroics that had nothing to do with a tiger or an elephant. Ravindra Kumar, a field consultant based in Bhagalpur, Bihar, won one of two Awards for Exceptional Bravery for pulling a drowning man out of the Ganga. Rajendra Bhoyar, a field assistant working out of Sindewahi in Chandrapur district, Maharashtra, won the other for stopping a fire from reaching a family’s home.

The trust announced both honours on its own website, without giving further detail on either incident — neither the date nor the extent of the man’s ordeal in the river is stated. The Mumbai-based charity, founded in 2002, says it now works across some 160 protected areas in 23 states, touching roughly 79 per cent of India’s tiger reserves. Its usual work is training frontline forest staff, tracking wildlife populations and managing conflict between people and animals.

The meeting ran from 6 to 9 September and was chaired by the trust’s president, Anish Andheria. Nine of the organisation’s programme teams took part, among them Conservation Research, the Combatting Wildlife Crime Programme and Human-Wildlife Interface Management, reviewing the past year’s work and setting plans for the next.

Andheria and the trust’s HR team also gave Canine Commitment medals to three of its conservation dogs, named Hira, Ace and Impi, and handed out Long Service Awards to close to half of the trust’s staff for five or ten years with the organisation.

Sources: Wildlife Conservation Trust