New Delhi: WTI Trustee Dr.R.Sukumar won the Inagural T.N.Khoshoo Memorial Award, 2004 in a glittering ceremony held at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The award was instituted by the T.N.Memorial Endowment Fund.

Dr.R.Sukumar is a Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore , India . He is one of the world leaders in the efforts to conserve elephants especially the Asian Elephants.

Since 1997, he has been the Chair of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of IUCN – The World Conservation Union.

He has published three books and over 70 scientific articles. He is the winner of the Presidential Award of the Chicago Zoological Society in 1989 and was honoured with the Order of the Golden Ark, by the Government of Netherlands in 1997 for his outstanding contribution to Elephant conservation.

His approach has been in using the elephant as a flagship for conserving landscapes, their biodiversity, and reconciling human interests with conservation. Most recently he was the recipient of the Whitley Gold Award for International Nature Conservation, 2003.

T.N.Khoshoo Memorial Endowment Fund

Dr. T.N.Khoshoo was a trustee of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Envitonment (ATREE). In 2002, students and friends of Dr.T.N.Khoshoo set up T.N.Khoshoo Memorial Endowment Fund at ATREE to honor the memory of a great scientist and a humanist. The purpose of the Khoshoo Endowment Fund is to biennially recognize and honor one or more relatively young individuals in the field of conservation and sustainable development by providing cash awards.