Year 3 results from our Partnership Funding winners
The Partnership Funding programme gave funding totalling €1.5million to support four previous Whitley Award winners to deliver conservation projects of global significance.
Distributed over three years, the projects completed in 2018 and have achieved outstanding results for snow leopards, penguins, river dolphins and large carnivores in, in Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
You can read project highlights below and download the full Partnership Funding results here.
Charudutt Mishra: From grassroots to global: Realising a conservation vision for snow leopards across their range
Highlight: The Snow Leopard Trust launched a nationwide expansion of their Citizen Ranger Wildlife Protection Program in Kyrgyzstan, which Partnership Funding helped pilot in 2014/15. The programme, which encourages rangers and local communities to combat poaching, now operates in all 20 of Kyrgyzstan’s National Parks. As part of the project, Interpol provided wildlife managers with training in anti-poaching law enforcement. These managers are being primed as future trainers, so they can build and maintain skills of 100+ front-line rangers across the country.
Pablo Borboroglu: Fostering global penguin conservation
Highlight: A major new protected area was declared in Argentina. Following nomination by the Global Penguin Society, the Blue Patagonia Biosphere Reserve was approved by UNESCO in 2015. Encompassing 3.1 million hectares, it is the largest in the country and covers an area nearly the size of Belgium! It protects 20 penguin colonies, 700 species including 40% of the global population of Magellanic penguins, southern right whales, sea lions, elephant seals and guanacos.
Fernando Trujillo: Strengthening local and regional conservation Initiatives for the protection of rivers & dolphins in South America
Highlight: After years of campaigning, the government of Colombia banned the trade of mota fish indefinitely in August 2017 following research conducted by Fernando and his team at Omacha. His work proved these scavenger fish contain toxic levels of mercury from illegal gold mining, making them unsafe for human consumption. The mota trade not only risks the health of the nation but fuels the illegal hunting of Amazonian pink river dolphins whose carcasses are used as bait to catch these fish. Now the trade has been halted, the killing will stop. Fernando’s campaign is highlighted in the award winning film ‘A River Below’.
Çağan Şekercioğlu: Landscape conservation of large carnivores, Turkey
Highlight: GPS collars have been fitted on a total of 29 brown bears, 16 wolves and three lynx to track their movements and provide crucial information on habitat use, range and behaviour. This is the first project to use crittercams (video collars) on bears and wolves in Turkey. It has led to significant media attention, . providing a ‘carnivore’s eye view’ of the corridor, and has even deterred poachers from killing collared animals. The project was part of a BBC documentary called ‘Animals with Cameras’, which aired in February 2018. KuzeyDoğa’s research also led to the discovery of the world’s first migratory brown bears.
Partnership Funding is a one-off grant type endowed by Fondation Segré and managed by WFN, which recognises and provides further funding to support the work of WFN’s most successful previous Whitley Award and Continuation Funding winners. We are extremely grateful to Fondation Segré for supporting scale up of this work.
View our Partnership Funding photo gallery.
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