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The Princess Royal presents a Whitley Award to Shivani Bhalla Photo: Courtesy
She received a prestigious international nature conservation prize from HRH, The Princess Royal on May 8. Shivani Bhalla won a Whitley Award at a special ceremony hosted at the Royal Geographical Society in UK. She is renowned for promoting human-lion co-existence in Northern Kenya.
For the past 11 years, Bhalla has lived in a small tent in Samburu National Reserve while doing her research and promoting conservation programmes. She encourages people to understand the importance of wildlife in the ecosystem by creating awareness, training, providing jobs as well as education.
Bhalla, 36, is the founder and director of Ewaso Lions, an NGO created in 2007 to improve the co-existence of lions and humans without the destruction of either.
‘Warrior Watch’, one of the programmes created by the organisation empowers young Samburu warriors to become ambassadors of the lions. The scheme now includes ‘Mama Simba’ involving local women as well.
Sir David Attenborough, a Trustee of the Whitley Fund for Nature, said: “Whitley Award winners are successful because they don’t just watch and measure, they act! They are the conservation experts not us. They know what to do and, more importantly, how to get it done.”
Other winners include Paula Kahumbu with her project ‘Hands off our elephants’, delivering African leadership to address Kenya’s poaching crisis and Tess Gatan-Balbas who is saving world’s rarest crocodile in the Philippines.
Whitley Award is worth up to £35,000 to be spent over one year. Kudos to a vibrant and charismatic, Bhalla for her accomplishment!
