Bayarjargal (Bayara) Agvaantseren (born 1969) is a Mongolian conservationist who has campaigned to save the habitat of the snow leopard in an area of the South Gobi Desert which has become a major mining hub. Thanks to her successful efforts to create the 8163-km2 Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve [1] and to have the authorities cancel 37 mining licences, in 2019 she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize. [2] [3] [4]
Born on 11 January 1969 in Rashaant, Khövsgöl Province, Bayarjargal Agvaantseren worked from the early 1990s as a language teacher and translator, specializing in English and Russian. In 1997, interested in the local environment, she spent the summer translating a research study for the Snow Leopard Trust. From 1997, she devoted her career to saving snow leopards and helping to sustain rural families. In 1997, she was appointed a programme manager for Snow Leopard Enterprises, a post she held until 2007 when she joined the Snow Leopard Trust as Mongolia Programme Director. Aware of the difficulties faced by local herdsmen and their families, that year she founded the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, a NGO designed to help rural women create and sell their valuable handicrafts while creating awareness of the need for snow leopard conservation. [5]
In 2009, realizing that her efforts towards conservation in the Tost region were threatened by mining interests, she began to focus her attention on political initiatives, mobilizing the local community to campaign for the protection of the landscape and its snow leopards. Her efforts continued year after year, finally leading the Mongolian parliament to designate the Tost Mountains a State Protected Area in 2016, as 80% of its deputies voting in favour of the proposal. [6] Now known as the Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve, all the mining licences in the area have since been cancelled. [5]
Thanks to her efforts to protect the Tost habitat of the snow leopard and the lives of the local families, in April 2019 she was one of six environmentalists from around the world who received the Goldman Environmental Prize. [4]
Her recent work focuses on slow leopard depredation. [7] [8] “We wanted to work with the herders, to bring them around by addressing the economic losses they suffered from the leopards,” said Agvaantseren in a 2019 interview.
Makalu Barun National Park is a national park in the Himalayas of Nepal that was established in 1992 as the eastern extension of Sagarmatha National Park. It is the world's only protected area with an elevation gain of more than 8,000 m (26,000 ft) enclosing tropical forest as well as snow-capped peaks. It covers an area of 1,500 km2 (580 sq mi) in the Solukhumbu and Sankhuwasabha districts, and is surrounded by a bufferzone to the south and southeast with an area of 830 km2 (320 sq mi).
Kuki Gallmann is an Italian-born Kenyan national, best-selling author, poet, environmental activist, and conservationist.
India is home to a large variety of wildlife. It is a biodiversity hotspot with various ecosystems ranging from the Himalayas in the north to the evergreen rainforests in the south, the sands of the west to the marshy mangroves of the east. India lies within the Indomalayan realm and is home to about 7.6% of mammal, 14.7% of amphibian, 6% of bird, 6.2% of reptilian, and 6.2% of flowering plant species. India's forests contain about 500 species of mammals and more than 1300 bird species.
The Nature Conservation Foundation is a non-governmental wildlife conservation and research organisation based in Mysore, India. They promote the use of science for wildlife conservation in India.
John Sinclair AO was an Australian environmentalist who received the Global 500 Roll of Honour award in 1990, and was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1993.
The snow leopard, commonly known as the ounce, is a species of large cat in the genus Panthera of the family Felidae. The species is native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because the global population is estimated to number fewer than 10,000 mature individuals and is expected to decline about 10% by 2040. It is mainly threatened by poaching and habitat destruction following infrastructural developments. It inhabits alpine and subalpine zones at elevations of 3,000–4,500 m (9,800–14,800 ft), ranging from eastern Afghanistan, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to southern Siberia, Mongolia and western China. In the northern part of its range, it also lives at lower elevations.
Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) refers to the negative interactions between humans and wild animals, with undesirable consequences both for people and their resources on the one hand, and wildlife and their habitats on the other. HWC, caused by competition for natural resources between human and wildlife, influences human food security and the well-being of both humans and other animals. In many regions, the number of these conflicts has increased in recent decades as a result of human population growth and the transformation of land use.
The Snow Leopard Trust is the largest and oldest organization working solely to protect the endangered snow leopard and its habitat in 12 countries of Central Asia. The trust is a non-profit organization with its headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The present total population of snow leopards in the wild is estimated at between 3,920 and 6,390.
Felidae Conservation Fund (FCF) is a California-based non-profit organization dedicated to preserving wild cats and their habitats. The organization supports and promotes international wild cat research and conservation by collaborating on field research projects, partnering with other environmental organizations, and developing community outreach and education programs.
Panthera Corporation, or Panthera, is a charitable organization devoted to preserving wild cats and their ecosystems around the globe. Founded in 2006, Panthera is devoted to the conservation of the world’s 40 species of wild cats and the vast ecosystems they inhabit. Their team of biologists, data scientists, law enforcement experts and wild cat advocates studies and protects the seven species of big cats: cheetahs, jaguars, leopards, lions, pumas, snow leopards and tigers. Panthera also creates targeted conservation strategies for the world’s most threatened and overlooked small cats, such as fishing cats, ocelots and Andean cats. The organization has offices in New York City and Europe, as well as offices in Mesoamerica, South America, Africa and Asia.
Kristine McDivitt Tompkins is the president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, an American conservationist, former CEO of Patagonia, Inc., a UN Patron of Protected Areas from 2018-2022. She has committed her career to protecting and restoring Chile and Argentina’s wild beauty and biodiversity by creating national parks, restoring the wildlife, inspiring activism, and fostering economic vitality as a result of conservation. Having protected over 14 million acres of parklands in Chile and Argentina through Tompkins Conservation and its partners, Kristine and Douglas Tompkins, her late husband who died in 2015, are considered some of the most successful national park-oriented philanthropists in history.
Catherine C. "Cath" Wallace is a New Zealand environmentalist and academic. She is a lecturer in economics and public policy at Victoria University of Wellington, and has been active in environment organizations in New Zealand. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1991, for her contributions to the protection of the environment of Antarctica.
George Beals Schaller is an American mammalogist, biologist, conservationist and author. Schaller is recognized by many as the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Born in Berlin, Schaller grew up in Germany, but moved to Missouri as a teen. He is vice president of Panthera Corporation and serves as chairman of their Cat Advisory Council. Schaller is also a senior conservationist at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
The Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that protects endangered wildlife by supporting conservationists in the field who promote coexistence between wildlife and people. WCN does this by providing its partners with capital, strategic capacity-building services, training, and operational support. WCN has been given a top rating amongst wildlife conservation charities, with a four star rating on Charity Navigator.
The Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC) was founded in 2000 by Dr Rodney Jackson, a leading expert on snow leopards and their habitat. The conservancy works to engage and incorporate local communities in protecting snow leopards in Pakistan, Nepal, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, and India. SLC is a non-profit organization with headquarters in Sonoma, California.
Priya Davidar is an Indian scientific researcher, conservation biologist, scholar, and author. She retired as a Professor at Pondicherry University and has conducted ecological research in different regions of India. She has authored a few books, including Whispers from the Wild, co-authored with E.R.C Davidar and published by Penguin India books. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012. She is actively involved with the conservation of forests and wildlife. She has published about 100 papers in scientific journals.
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Jacqueline (Jacqui) Evans is a marine conservationist from the Cook Islands. Her efforts to protect the marine environment surrounding the islands came to fruition in July 2017 when the government created the Marae Moana marine park. It provided for the sustainable management of 763,000 square miles of ocean territory, including 15 more highly protected exclusion zones covering 125,000. In recognition of her efforts, in April 2019 Evans was one of six environmentalists to be awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize.
Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve is a nature reserve in Mongolia, dedicated to conserving the snow leopard.
Sanjay Gubbi is a conservation biologist based in Karnataka, India. His work focuses on the conservation of large carnivores like tigers and leopards, working on applied aspects and understanding their population biology, proposing conservation policies for their protection, and working to minimize human-wildlife conflict. He currently works as a scientist with Nature Conservation Foundation, a Mysore based NGO.