10 December 2021, New Delhi

Vivek Menon, Founder and Executive Director of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), has been awarded Whitley Fund for Nature’s continuation funding for the year 2021. This is the third continuation funding award for Mr Menon, since the 2001 Whitley award, for his tireless efforts to work for elephant conservation in India. Mr Menon has been at the forefront of wildlife conservation efforts not just in India but globally as well.

The Whitley Fund for Nature is a nature conservation charity that provides funding, training and recognition to support conservation leaders in developing nations. Established by Edward Whitley OBE in 1993, the Whitley Award has completed 25 years and over the period has funded 200 conservationists across 80 countries that need immediate conservation action.

Mr Menon first received the Whitley Award for a project focusing on ‘Monitoring of Elephant Poaching and Ivory Trade in India and Asia’ in 2001. Within a decade, in 2009, the Whitley Continuation Funding Award supported him to initiate a process to secure priority wildlife corridors linking critical elephant habitats in North East India.

With the previous continuation-funding award of 2018, WTI under Mr. Menon’s leadership facilitated the Right of Passage for ~7,000 elephants across elephant landscape of 13,000 sq. km. This southern component of elephant corridors combined with the northeast was the first ever all-India network protection of elephant corridors by non-government/ community-based mobilizers. The project was also able to train 10 local organizations/individuals as Green Corridor Champions to protect 17-targeted corridors. In addition to this, a science based monitoring mechanism was created to monitor land-use changes of the 28 corridors in Southern India to ensure they continue to be viable. In addition, land-use cover maps based on satellite imagery were developed and data was collected for a better understanding of the corridor landscapes. A public-private partnership through various awareness campaigns was also established, which were immensely supported by communities, and the response was overwhelming as the initiatives reached to almost 100,000 people from different sectors. This also helped bring together major stakeholders like forest department officials, revenue department, estate owners, locals and advocates in key elephant corridor areas.

With Continuation Funding 2021, Mr. Menon along with his team at WTI plans to establish parliamentary support groups for wildlife conservation across three new states, upholding Asian elephants as a flagship species. The organisation also intends to take this up along with influencing policy to ensure linear infrastructure such as railways taking elephants into account. In addition, the plan will be to bring together a network of responsible media groups who can help broaden and sustain the conservation message, providing elephants with Right of Passage across India.

Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) through a project titled Right of Passage’ aims to ensure protection for elephant corridors across the country. The project simultaneously works to address human-elephant conflict issues in corridor areas. The undisturbed movement of elephants through corridors shall significantly reduce instances of elephants coming in direct confrontation with humans thereby reducing conflict.  Safe elephant corridors translate to minimum human wildlife conflict, protected habitats, zero unnatural mortality and a balanced ecosystem. The project aims to secure the 101 elephant corridors across the country through various means – including land purchase, voluntary relocation, and campaign and government interventions. Click here to read in detail.