Marine biologist Naomi Longa and her all-female team of PNG coral divers; and Cameroon manatee expert, Aristide Kamla, declared prestigious Whitley Award winners
The winners of the 2024 Whitley Awards – often referred to as the ‘Green Oscars’ – have been announced, with two marine conservationists set to receive £50,000 of project funding for their contribution to global efforts to protect 30 per cent of the planet’s land and sea by 2030.
The overall winner, wildlife biologist Dr Purnima Devi Barman, from India (pictured above), will receive the 2024 Whitley Gold Award of £100,000 for leading a movement of more than ten thousand local women to save the greater adjutant stork (Leptoptilos dubius) and its wetlands habit in Assam, in the north of India.
The greater adjutant had been categorised as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species since 1994, with the population of the storks in Assam estimated to have declined to as few as 450 birds.
Dr Barman began a project to save the species from extinction in 2007 and, together with her army of ‘stork sisters’, has changed the fortunes of the bird around. The population today has nearly quadrupled since her work began, leading to the stork having its Red List status upgraded to ‘Near Threatened’ in 2023.
Dr Barman has said she plans to use her winning funds to raise the number of storks to 5,000 by 2030, and expand her ‘Hargila Army’ with the aid of a further 10,000 local women.
Sir David Attenborough, WFN Ambassador and long-term supporter of the Whitley Awards, said winners represent some of the ‘most impressive conservationists in the world, combining knowing how to respond to crises yet also bring communities and wider audiences with them.’
The Whitley Charity’s patron, HRH Anne, The Princess Royal, presented on 1 May at the Royal Geographical Society in London, on the 30th anniversary of the first awards; a recording of the event’s livestream is avaialble on the Whitley Awards YouTube channel
Marine conservation Whitley Awards winners
Naomi Longa (Papua New Guinea)
Naomi Longa, a marine biologist and co-director of the NGO Sea Women of Melanesia has been recognised by the Whitley Awards for her work leading an all-female team of indigenous divers and snorkellers in the monitoring and management of Papua New Guinea’s coral reefs.
Based in Kimbe Bay, Ms Longa and her team have collected more than 15,000 reef survey images and provided 2,500 of them for analysis to ReefCloud, an open-source platform that uses machine learning to extract and rapidly share coral health and composition data with the world’s coral reef monitoring community.
Her team currently manages Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs), for which government approval is required, and plans to use her Whitley Award funding to create four more to manage a network of LMMAs around Kimbe Bay, internationally recognised as ‘Hope Spot’ by Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue Foundation.
Longa’s all-female team is helping to break some of the cultural norms to promote gender equality in PNG through their work. Her Sea Women of Melanesia Foundation began in 2021 with 10 women and has expanded to 85 members in just three years.
Together with the expansion of the LMMAs, the Whitley funding she receives will be used to engage with five more coastal communities and train ten more women to monitor the reefs through scuba diving and snorkelling.
Aristide Kamla (Cameroon)
Founder and CEO of the African Marine Mammal Conservation Organization, (AMMCO), Cameroon’s Aristide Kamla has been recognised by the Whitley Awards for his work to save the African manatees of Lake Ossa.
Listed as Vulnerable to Extinction on the IUCN Red List of threatened species, Lake Ossa’s resident manatee population was already in decline due to accidental capture, poaching and habitat degradation when the lake was blanketed in 2021 by Salvinia molesta, a floating fern native to Brazil.
Almost completely covering the surface of the lake, the weed prevents proper gas exchange between the water and the atmosphere, inhibits the movements of the manatees and subjects them to accidental boat strikes as fishermen are unable to see them.
The proliferation of the aquatic fern Salvinia molesta is currently the major threat to the manatee and its habitat because it covers the surface of the lake, prevents exchanges between water and the atmosphere, the movements of the manatee and fish as well as navigation of fishermen.
To combat the spread of the invasive plant, Kamla introduced a species of weevil known as the salvinia weevil (Cytobagous salvinae) insect, a natural consumer of Salvinia molesta which has removed as much as 70 per cent of the infestation from Lake Ossa’s surface. Kamla has also mobilised local communities to manually remove the plant – which can be burned and sold as charcoal – and actively monitor the manatees’ movements.
Kamla is also working to bring fishermen and the management board of the Lake Ossa Wildlife Reserve (LOWR) together to establish a fishing code and ensure the long-term protection of the manatees.
Other Whitley Awards winners
Fernanda Abra (Brazil)
A researcher who has been working with the Waimiri-Atroari people to build low-cost canopy bridges over a highway through the Amazon rainforest to help tree-dwelling mammals ‘cross the road’ and protect them from collision with vehicles.
Kuenzang Dorji (Bhutan)
A wildlife biologist who seeks to ‘restore harmony’ between people and primates, trying to protect the endangered Gee’s golden langurs, a species of monkey once held sacred that have been raiding farms as a result of the mass destruction of their natural habitat.
Leroy Ignacio (Guyana)
An Indigenous Makushi conservationist, Ignacio works to protect the endangered red siskin songbird in Guayana – the world’s fastest-growing economy – by expanding a conservation zone that five indigenous communities created on their land to protect the small finch.
Raju Acharya (Nepal)
Nepal’s leading owl specialist, Acharya spearheaded a 10-year government plan to protect 19 owl species in central Nepal, through the engagement of communities from the region’s ten ethnic groups.
For more information, visit www.whitleyaward.org, or follow the awards on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
