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2022 Continuation Funding
2018 Continuation Funding
2014 Continuation Funding
2013 Whitley GOLD Award
2011 Continuation Funding
2008 Joint Whitley GOLD Award Winner
Cagan Sekercioglu Turkey Wetland and Freshwater
Putting Turkey on the conservation map

Çağan Şekercioğlu grew up in the suburbs of Istanbul completely obsessed by animals and whose first lesson in conservation left him devastated, when the wetlands where he played as a small child were built upon in his early teens. It was this early experience that would shape his life’s work and whose many achievements since then to safeguard Turkey’s threatened wildlife habitats have been inspired by an innate desire to save them from suffering the same fate as the wetland of his childhood recollections.

Turkey is the only country covered almost entirely by three of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots: the Caucasus, Irano-Anatolian, and Mediterranean, yet it also faces one of the worst environmental crises in its history, threatened by new development projects, such as the construction of dams and highways, especially as a result of the opening up of the borders with neighbouring Georgia and Armenia. Turkey‘s rank in the Yale Environmental Performance Index dropped from 49th to 109th since 2006. It ranks 121st out of 132 countries in Biodiversity and Habitat Conservation.

Against this backdrop, Turkish conservationist professor Çağan Şekercioğlu, 37, initiated the Kars Biodiversity Project in 2003. Under the umbrella of the NGO that he founded in 2007, Kuzeydoga Society, Çağan played a key role in gaining international Ramsar recognition for Lake Kuyucuk – home to over 40,000 birds of 227 species, a key habitat for globally Endangered White-headed Duck and Egyptian Vulture and a mecca for international birdwatchers. He also succeeded in getting Turkey’s first bird nesting island built on the lake.

Winning a first Whitley Award in 2008, his unique holistic approach, aims to protect wetland ecosystems whilst bringing real benefits to local people. Tackling issues including illegal hunting and poaching and overgrazing by livestock, this community-based conservation approach combines biodiversity monitoring, raising awareness in the media, as well as through environmental education programmes for schools and young people and promoting wildlife and nature tourism initiatives to support the local economy.

After three years of persistent lobbying backed by camera trapping, wolf satellite-tracking and other scientific data collected for the first time in Turkey, Şekercioğlu convinced the government in December 2011 to create Turkey’s First Wildlife Corridor and a lifelong dream became reality through one man’s perseverance against huge challenges.

The largest active conservation project in Turkey will see 4.5 million native tree species being planted, reforesting approximately 2500 hectares to connect the Sarıkamış-Allahuekber National Park and other forest fragments to the extensive forests along the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus mountains in neighbouring Georgia . The corridor will create a new protected area of 28,543 hectares, larger than 70% of Turkey’s 41 existing national parks The wildlife corridor will achieve landscape-scale conservation objectives, connecting fragmented patches of forest through reforestation; preventing soil erosion; and increasing the safe movement of large carnivores (wolf, brown bear and Caucasian lynx), thereby ensuring the long-term habitat connectivity and viability of their populations.

In the same year as being nominated as one of National Geographic Magazine’s Risk Takers, Çağan Şekercioğlu receives the 20th Anniversary Whitley Gold Award, which recognises outstanding members of WFN’s winner alumni network and is awarded to an individual who since winning their initial Whitley Award have made a significant contribution to conservation. Joining the Judging Panel to assist in the selection process, the Gold winner also acts as mentor to Whitley Award winners receiving their Awards in the same year. Turkey’s first Whitley Award winner, Çağan Şekercioğlu also becomes the first conservationist in world to win two Whitley Gold Awards.

Never one to rest on such laurels, Çağan Şekercioğlu has his next mission in sight: to halt the construction of the Tuzluca Dam that will destroy the Aras Valley Bird Paradise Prof. Şekercioğlu discovered and studied since 2006. One of the world’s most important wetlands, home to most of Turkey’s 470 bird species, and over 100 species of mammals, reptiles and amphibians, this important ecotourism center’s best chance for survival is Çağan Şekercioğlu and his dedicated team.

Winner Update: 2018 Continuation Funding

Protecting globally Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in northeastern Turkey
£70,000 over two years

Extremely biodiverse northeastern Turkey is located at the intersection of Caucasian and Iran-Anatolian Global Biodiversity Hotspots. Since 2004 Dr Çağan Hakkı Şekercioğlu has monitored and tracked birds in the region, demonstrating the significance of the wetlands for millions of breeding, wintering and migrating birds coming from 31 countries across Europe, Asia and Africa. The work by Çağan and his team has been instrumental in the declaration of Lake Kuyumuk as eastern Turkey’s first Ramasar site. However, these globally significant sites remain threatened by development projects such as mining and hydro-electric dams in the face of weakening environmental legislation.

Çağan will use his Continuation Funding to continue to petition local and central government for increased protection of 11 Key Biodiversity and Important Bird Areas. He will also expand environmental education and successful village based ecotourism programmes in the local communities that could be affected by flooding should damming go ahead. Long term ornithological monitoring will also serve to help better understand and safeguard this wetland from being lost.

2022 CONTINUATION FUNDING

Preserving northeastern Turkey’s wetland biodiversity
£70,000 over 2 years

Every year, millions of breeding, wintering and migrating birds arrive in northeastern Turkey from at least 36 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. Çağan Şekercioğlu and his team at KuzeyDoğa have worked in this extremely biodiverse region since 2004, home to globally important wetlands and 12 Important Bird Areas (IBAs). Çağan and his team were instrumental in seeing Lake Kuyucuk recognised as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, but the region faces mounting threats from largescale development projects, climate change, and water extraction.

Çağan will use his Continuation Funding to continue monitoring these IBAs, with a special emphasis on Lake Kuyucuk and the Aras River wetlands. As climate change leads to hotter summers and droughts, and local people’s water needs increase leading to unsustainable water extraction, wetlands have started to disappear all over Turkey, and Lake Kuyucuk is no exception, having laid dry for much of the last decade. Çağan and his team will work with villagers to find long-term solutions, freeing the streams feeding into Lake Kuyucuk while recognising local people’s water needs.

In the Aras River wetlands, Çağan and his team have prevented the construction of a large dam since 2013 by bringing a regional lawsuit against the government, but this has since been overruled. Çağan will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, whilst continuing to collect data to demonstrate its global importance, with the eventual goal of the cancellation of the entire dam project and securing official protection of the Aras River wetlands. The outcomes of this ambitious and wide-ranging project are crucial to securing these globally important sites for birds and people, with solutions that can be replicated to save the rest of Turkey’s rapidly disappearing wetlands.