Celebrating the 2024/25 Neville Shulman Award winners
4th November 2024
The Neville Shulman Earthwatch Awards give individuals from across the world the opportunity to be granted funding that will enable them to undertake new meaningful research, increase local community engagement in environmental projects and tackle some of the planet’s biggest environmental challenges.
In particular we look for applications from early-career scientists that address one or more of the following areas of research:
- The impacts of climate change
- The loss of wildlife and habitats
- Nature in cities
- Freshwater pollution
Our winners of the 2024/25 Neville Shulman Awards have now been chosen so we are thrilled to be able to introduce them to you! They are three scientists undertaking research in Kenya and India. All three winners will be receiving grants from the Neville Shulman Awards to enable them to start work on their proposed projects.
Their research will be focusing on monitoring and restoring the health of ecosystems and engaging local communities as well as the next generation of researchers in conservation.
A huge congratulations to all our award winners. Earthwatch is looking forward to seeing your projects develop over the next year!
Read on to find out more about our talented winners and their vital work.
Consolata Gitau: using acoustics technology to monitor the health of Kenya’s savanna ecosystems and engaging local communities in conservation
Consolata Gitau is a Kenyan ecologist and a postgraduate researcher at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
“My project focuses on engaging local communities in Maasai Mara, Kenya, to use Passive Acoustic Monitoring in order to assess the restoration and degradation of our savanna ecosystems.
Receiving the Neville Shulman Earthwatch Award is an incredible honour and a huge boost to our efforts. I’m excited to use this opportunity to make a meaningful impact on African conservation!”
Dr Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar: empowering young researchers to shape the future of wildlife conservation in Assam
Dr Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar is a wildlife biologist who has been focusing on the conservation of Asian elephants and grassland management in Northeast India for over 20 years. Currently, he is a senior scientist at the research-based biodiversity conservation organisation Aaranyak.
Image credit: Imon Abedin
“My project focuses on engaging young researchers in the conservation of wildlife and its habitat in Assam. I am interested in empowering and capacitating the youth who can be the future custodians of the rich biodiversity of Northeast India.
I feel very privileged to receive this award and express my gratitude to Earthwatch for this support.”
Alex Nduah Nderi: exploring the biocultural restoration of ecosystems in Kenya with the help of local communities
Alex Nduah Nderi is an emerging ecologist keen on advancing the scientific and social understanding of ecosystem restoration for communities. His aim is to simultaneously achieve conservation goals and socio-economic wellbeing especially in rural environments.
Biocultural diversity refers to the link between biodiversity and human diversity and the fact that different cultures and peoples perceive and appreciate biodiversity in different ways. (Source: Springer Nature)
“My project focuses on the biocultural restoration of ecosystems in the Maasai Mara region in Kenya. It will involve building a database of the biocultural core species through surveys and focus group discussions with the local communities, complemented by rigorous literature review to enrich the data collected. This will be followed by modelling of the species distribution under climate change and land-use change scenarios in the research locations, and projected for the Kenyan territory.
I’m very excited to receive the Earthwatch Neville Shulman Award, which will greatly support my fieldwork. It’s a big milestone in my academic and professional development as an emerging scientist in ecology.”
Top banner image: Dr Bibhuti Lahkar training local young people in bird watching. Image credit: Aaranyak