Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) operates in service of India’s natural heritage. Their mission is to conserve wildlife and its habitat, and to work for the welfare of individual wild animals, in partnership with communities and governments. To achieve their goals, WTI maintains an approach undergirded by science and shaped by empathy, focusing on key areas including wildlife crime, species recovery, and human-wildlife conflict mitigation.
Beginning with just three members of staff in 1998, today WTI employs a 150-strong team consisting of veterinarians, lawyers, consultants, field biologists, social scientists, conservation managers, and specialists in finance, business management and communications.
Over the course of their history, our partner has combined long-term projects (such as securing wildlife corridors) with an agile approach that allows for effective crisis management and the provision of urgent aid to the species, habitats and communities that need it most.
WTI currently runs 40+ projects across 23 Indian states. As of March 2020, some of the many milestones our partner has achieved include saving 2,103 elephants from train collisions, providing 19,444 families with green livelihoods, and protecting more than 300,000 acres (121,000 ha) of natural habitat.
World Land Trust (WLT) became partners with WTI in 2003, after a site visit to assess the feasibility of funding wildlife corridors in India. Our first funds secured the protection of the Siju-Rewak Corridor, in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya State in India’s northeast.
Siju-Rewak was just the start of the Garo Green Spine, a project that continues to this day. WLT and other partners have so far protected 9,800 acres (4,000 ha) and restored 740 acres (300 ha) in this network of protected areas, alongside the A’chik Mande people of the Garo Hills.
WLT have helped to fund three other corridors that safeguard migratory routes running through five Indian states. These projects reduce conflict between humans and wildlife while also providing other benefits for local communities, who cede their land voluntarily for conservation.
The WLT-WTI partnership has expanded to support India’s wetlands and mangroves, two habitats known for their biodiversity and the important role they play in combatting climate change. WLT also funded a feasibility study for coral restoration in India following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
Please see our India page.
WTI focus on nine key areas in their work:
• Conflict mitigation: Demonstrating innovative and replicable large-scale models of human-wildlife conflict mitigation
• Enforcement and law: Tackling wildlife crime by reducing poaching and the illegal wildlife trade through PELT (Policy, Enforcement, Law and Training)
• Natural heritage campaigns: Creating positive and measurable change in people’s perceptions to improve the conservation and welfare of wildlife in India
• Protected area recovery: Improving the existing functionality of protected areas
• Right of passage: Securing key wildlife corridors for umbrella species like Asian Elephant
• Species recovery: Supporting the recovery of populations or subpopulations of threatened species and demonstrating recovery through improved recovery scores
• Wild aid: Providing fast-acting and focused response at times of emergencies, such as tsunamis or train collisions with elephants
• Wild lands: Securing critical habitats outside of the traditional protected area system, especially habitat linkages, wetlands, grasslands, community reserves, Important Bird Areas and sacred groves
• Wild rescue: Supporting the welfare of displaced animals and pioneering science-based rehabilitation for various species
Website: wti.org
Executive Director: Vivek Menon