Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) Conference and Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) award.


I have been selected to present a paper on ECO-V’s Pelican conservation work at the annual conference of SCB in July in Chattanooga, USA. This is the second time I am going to present our work at a SCB conference. Last time it was in Brazil in year 2005 where I got the opportunity meet some other researchers working on Great White Pelicans and shared many ideas with them.

This time I am going to talk about the challenges we faced during our pelican project during last 4 years and also how we created awareness and consciousness on this threatened species among different stakeholders who had zero knowledge (scientific and behavioral information) on pelicans and their habitats and how they became nature lovers and conservationists.

ECO-V received the continuation award for Pelican Project from Conservation Leadership programme (CLP) (Former BP awards) this year which is a great encouragement. The award ceremony and the training will be held in Chattanooga, USA in July. Harsha, our field coordinator to the Pelican Conservation Project has been nominated for the training and he will be attending the SCB conference too which would be an interesting experience for both of us to attend the conference together. I have already received this training in 2003 when I won the first award from CLP. Our team has also been selected to get a 5 days training course on GIS sponsored by CLP following the SCB conference which would be very useful for both our Pelican project and the Kalu Wandura (Leaf langur) Project.

Our “Friends of Pelicans” at Udawalwa were delighted about this news as they can continue their good work with additional funding to sharpen their skills through our association for another year.


Kanchana

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