Mangalore: Ulhas Karanth Bags Prestigious J Paul Getty Conservation Award

Daijiworld Media Network- Mangalore (NR)
Inputs: Richard Springer of India - West
 
Mangalore Oct 26: J Paul Getty Award for Conservation Leadership- 2007 was conferred on Indian tiger expert, conservationist and naturalist K Ulhas Karanth recently in Washington, D C.

Karanth has worked ceaselessly for 25 years,protecting tigers and other wildlife in southern India. WWF officials therefore stated his is “a career devoted to the science of endangered species and their habitats.”  The said prize includes a cash purse of $200,000. Karanth is the first tiger expert to win the award.

The award is given by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by a panel of distinguished international judges, who recognize individuals worldwide showing exceptional conservation leadership in any one of the three areas annually rotating, such as political, scientific and community.

The WWF is in fact the largest multinational conservation organization in the world, working in 100 countries, with 1.2 million members in the US and about five million globally. The Bronx Zoo-based WCS also operates the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, educating more than four million zoo and aquarium visitors annually on wildlife conservation.

Brief Background on Ulhas Karanth:
 
Ulhas Karanth is the son of noted Kannada writer, the late Kota Shivaram Karanth. He is a scientist at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society in New York and director of the WCS India programme. Ulhas Karanth, who received his Ph.D in applied zoology from Mangalore University, is a scientific fellow of the Zoological Society of London and serves on the editorial boards of the journal Oryz and the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Karanth is reported to have felt privileged to win an award that so many renowned naturalists have won before him, including ape expert Jane Goodal. He has plans to use the funds to set up a conservation-related master’s fellowship programme in his name for graduate students at a programme run jointly by the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore and WCS-India. This programme is currently being held at Manipal University, but will soon switch to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, he is reported to have revealed.