The Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) have announced the six conservation leaders receiving the Whitley Awards 2022. After a 2-year hiatus because of COVID-19, the awards ceremony returned to the Royal Geographical Society for this flagship event of the UK-based charity. The ceremony was also broadcast online.

The awards provide funding of GBP 40,000 to each project over 1 year. The 2022 Whitley Award winners are Emmanuel Amoah, Ghana (Tales from the riverbank: safeguarding the last stronghold of West African slender-snouted crocodile); Micaela Camino, Argentina (Empowering communities to defend their human rights and conserve Argentina's Dry Chaco); Pablo Hoffmann, Brazil (Rooting for the future: nurturing wild plant diversity in the Araucaria Forest region); Sonam Lama, Nepal (People and red pandas: mutually beneficial conservation in the Himalayas); Estrela Matilde, São Tomé and Príncipe (Stemming the tide of plastic pollution: an island-wide effort to save sea turtles); and Dedy Yansyah, Indonesia (Last stand for the Sumatran rhino: looking out for Leuser's ecosystem engineers).

In addition, the 2005 Whitley Award alumnus Charudutt Mishra of the Snow Leopard Trust received the Whitley Gold Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to conservation. This GBP 100,000 top prize was presented to Charu for his work training conservationists to implement locally led, equitable practices that place communities at the centre of conservation, using principles distilled from collaborations to conserve snow leopards across all 12 snow leopard range countries. Charu's Whitley Gold Award will enable him to roll out these principles with the help of WFN's alumni network.

To date, the charity has given GBP 19 million in conservation funding to more than 200 conservation leaders in over 80 countries. As the UN resets the environmental goals for 2030, the need to preserve the natural world has never been stronger and WFN supports emerging country nationals working in regions where biodiversity is rich but resources for conservation are lacking. They lead projects that are rooted in community involvement and are pragmatic, science-based and impactful.

The Whitley Fund for Nature has a long-term commitment to conservation leaders: winners can apply for continuation funding to scale up their work or respond to new threats. As part of this, WFN supports nature-based solutions that address climate change and biodiversity loss in consultation with communities and Indigenous people. Winners also become life members of the global network of Whitley Award alumni, giving them access to like-minded leaders and opportunities to foster collaborations. Over half of Whitley Award winners go on to receive Continuation Funding grants, worth up to GBP 100,000 over 2 years. For the first time, the charity awarded over GBP 1,000,000 in Continuation Funding in 2021, including GBP 340,000 in nature-based solutions projects. Many winners become influential conservationists, with projects making an impact from the grassroots to the national and international levels.

For more information on the Whitley Fund for Nature, the Whitley Awards, supported projects and how to apply, visit whitleyaward.org.