Eminent conservationist and scientist Dr Vibhu Prakash - whose name is synonymous with vulture conservation in India - has been conferred with the Lifetime Service Award of the coveted Sanctuary Wildlife Awards.
Dr Prakash has been the Deputy Director and Principal Scientist of the Bombay Natural History Society since June 1995.
Dr Prakash played an instrumental role in the banning of veterinary use of diclofenac – the drug that caused the decline in vultures. With over four decades of raptor studies and vulture conservation behind him, he continues his vital work in the field.
Today he is a PhD guide for students at Mumbai University. His wife Nikita works shoulder to shoulder with him at Conservation Breeding Centres and his two sons, Rishabh and Saurabh, though engineers by profession, are very keen on raptors too.
He was involved in setting up the internationally acclaimed Vulture Conservation Breeding Programme with centres in Pinjore (Haryana), Buxa (West Bengal), Rani (Assam) and in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh). Today, these centres manage more than 800 vultures. Additionally, 344 hatchlings have been successfully reared. This has been primarily instrumental in the recovery of three Gyps vulture species – the White-backed G. bengalensis, Long-billed G. indicus and Slenderbilled G. tenuirostris.
The Sanctuary Wildlife Awards, sponsored by DSP Mutual Fund, and co-sponsored by Godrej Industries and Morningstar India, were presented at the iconic National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai.
“The Sanctuary Wildlife Awards were launched in 2000, and our strategy then was to hone in on virtually unknown wildlife defenders, shine a spotlight on their work and have some of the most prominent and credible individuals present them with recognition and admiration in the form of awards and public recognition. The Earth Defenders included forest guards and middle-level forest officers, quiet but brilliant scientists, teachers, young adults, and photographers. They all had one thing in common…a burning desire to protect the biosphere and leave a better, safer planet for future generations,” said Bittu Sahgal, Editor, Sanctuary Asia.
The Young Naturalist Award went to Munmuni Payeng while Suprabha Seshan got the Green Teacher Award.
The Wildlife Service Awards went to Rituraj Phukan, Ramana Athreya, Panchami Manoo Ukil, Shabir Husain Bhat and Arun Venkataramanan.
Dr Prakash, while he was a graduate student in the 1970s, he enjoyed birding along the Abu Nallah, a large drain that flowed through Meerut city. One day, he spotted a huge flock of European Starlings and, unable to identify them, he bought The Book of Indian Birds by Dr Sálim Ali, but he didn’t find the birds within those pages either. Puzzled, he wrote to the celebrated ornithologist and was pleasantly surprised to receive a response. That was the beginning of his correspondence with the iconic Indian naturalist.
After graduation, he decided to apply to the Bombay Natural History Society and got the job. His first posting at Point Calimere, Tamil Nadu, laid the foundation for his lifelong interest in raptors.
In the early 80s, he began working on his PhD at the Keoladeo Ghana National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, meticulously observing various species of raptors and recording their population changes
and nesting performance over the years. He was awarded a PhD degree by Mumbai University in 1990. In the early 90s, Dr Vibhu Prakash and his team continued gathering data on vulture populations across national parks.
“If not for their constant monitoring, the sharp decline in numbers would have gone unnoticed. Racing against the clock, he and his colleagues initiated the vulture recovery programme, which became the guiding force for the Indian government’s response to the situation,” Sanctuary notes about his contribution.
Deccan Herald is on WhatsApp Channels| Join now for Breaking News & Editor's Picks