In early June, the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) announced the winners of its 2020 Team Awards, which will provide support for 19 teams of early-career conservationists leading critical projects on globally threatened species. The awardees will benefit from project funding worth a combined total of USD 342,830, thanks to support from Arcadia—a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. As part of the award, one member from each winning team will be invited to participate in CLP's international Conservation Management and Leadership course, which provides trainees with essential skills and networking opportunities to help advance their career in conservation. As a result of restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, this year the course will be held online, followed by an in-person reunion when it is deemed safe to do so. The awardees will also benefit from long-term mentoring from experts working within the conservation sector and will join CLP's global Alumni Network to gain peer-to-peer support, access to learning resources and grants, and other key information to help secure their future as conservation leaders.
This year's 19 award-winning projects span the globe—with six in Africa, five in Eurasia, four in Asia and the Pacific, and four in Latin America—and include the first-ever CLP Team Awards granted to projects in Costa Rica, Botswana and Tajikistan. The successful projects will undertake research and practical conservation action to save a range of threatened species, many of which are categorized as Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. These include the Vulnerable snow leopard Panthera uncia in India and Tajikistan, the Endangered white-bellied pangolin Phataginus tricuspis in Nigeria, the Critically Endangered El Rincon stream frog Pleurodema somuncurense in Argentina, and the Vulnerable red-breasted goose Branta ruficollis in Kazakhstan. Other projects focus on threatened but relatively neglected flora and fauna, including endemic invertebrate species living in the dark karst caves of western Georgia, important seagrass ecosystems in Costa Rica, and the species-rich mecrusse forest in Mozambique.
The teams will use a variety of research methods, such as GPS-tagging and camera traps. For example, GPS-tagging will be used to monitor the last known population of the Vulnerable short-tailed roundleaf bat Hipposideros curtus in Nigeria, and camera traps will track elusive carnivores, such as the Endangered dhole Cuon alpinus, through the forest reserves of north-east Bangladesh. Many teams will conduct outreach activities to engage local communities in long-lasting conservation solutions. For example, the recipients of this year's top prize, the Conservation Leadership Award (worth USD 50,000), will train 30 conservation champions and engage 50 local schools in a long-term plan to save the snow leopard in the trans-Himalaya, India.
CLP is now inviting applications to its 2021 Team Awards (see p. 750). To view a full list of the funded projects, visit conservationleadershipprogramme.org/our-projects/latest-projects-2020. CLP was initiated in 1985 and is a partnership between BirdLife International, Fauna & Flora International and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
