New Delhi: Indian conservationists, Barkha Subba and Parveen Shaikh have won the prestigious 2026 Whitley Awards for their work on protecting the habitat of the Himalayan Salamander and community led protection of the nesting sites of Indian Skimmer on the Chambal river.
With her Whitley Award, Barkha will focus on seven of the most critical breeding sites of the rare and evolutionarily distinct amphibian. “The main threat is habitat loss due to rapid urbanisation, expanding tourism, wetland modification and invasive species,” Barkha said from London where she received the award on Wednesday. Approximately 30 breeding sites remain locally - many of which lie outside protected areas.
Barkha, who is a scientific adviser at Darjeeling based Federation of Societies for Environmental Protection (FOSEP), will lead the first coordinated grassroots effort to secure the future of the Himalayan salamander in Darjeeling. Her project will restore habitat, remove invasive species, screen for the deadly chytrid fungal disease, as well as engage local people in awareness programmes promoting sustainable land use and eco-friendly tourism.
Endemic to India, Nepal and Bhutan, the Himalayan salamander, which can grow up to 17 cm in length and live for up to 11 years, was once widely distributed across Darjeeling’s cool, shaded wetlands and forest fringes. Meeting a salamander “feels like meeting a messenger from deep evolutionary time – a reminder of how long nature has endured and how quickly we can lose it.” Barkha Subba said in a statement on receiving the award. Salamanders return to their natal site to breed and lay eggs – a process known as philopatry, which makes them highly vulnerable to change in habitat and wetland health.
{{/usCountry}}Endemic to India, Nepal and Bhutan, the Himalayan salamander, which can grow up to 17 cm in length and live for up to 11 years, was once widely distributed across Darjeeling’s cool, shaded wetlands and forest fringes. Meeting a salamander “feels like meeting a messenger from deep evolutionary time – a reminder of how long nature has endured and how quickly we can lose it.” Barkha Subba said in a statement on receiving the award. Salamanders return to their natal site to breed and lay eggs – a process known as philopatry, which makes them highly vulnerable to change in habitat and wetland health.
{{/usCountry}}“The habitat of the Himalayan salamander in the Darjeeling tea landscape is undergoing complex changes. Cheaper Nepal tea, often marketed as ‘Himalayan tea’, has increased competition for estates at a time when climate change, erratic rainfall and ageing plantations have pushed down yields. Legacy estates are being acquired by companies focused on profits and also diversifying into tea tourism to remain economically viable. At the same time, the region faces growing environmental challenges, including landslides, soil erosion, and shrinking freshwater sources linked to development,” a statement from UK based charity, the Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) said.Globally wetlands are disappearing faster than any other ecosystem and one fifth could be lost by 2050.
Parveen was recognised for her community-led “Guardians of the Skimmer’ initiative on the Chambal River. Through the recruitment of local nest guardians and continuous scientific monitoring, nest survival has increased to 27% from 14% with the local population growing to about 1,000 individuals last year from 400 in 2017, WFN said.
Once widely distributed across Southeast Asia, the Indian Skimmer has disappeared from most of its historic range amid the large-scale degradation of river habitats. Globally wetlands are disappearing faster than any other ecosystem with rivers showing an increasingly disrupted water cycle. Only one-third of river basins had normal conditions in 2024, according to a UN report, with two-thirds either dangerously low in water or unusually high. With Whitley Award, Parveen, a Bombay Natural History Society scientist, will strengthen protection at Chambal and expand the initiative to key sites around Prayagraj, where the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers converge.
“Local guardians help identify new sandbars, monitor nests, and prevent disturbance during the breeding season. Some now proudly refer to the skimmers as ‘our birds’, which reflects a growing sense of ownership. This change in perception from indifference to stewardship has been one of the most meaningful outcomes of the project,” said Parveen Shaikh in a statement.
“Our work us in the Chambal. We want to try and expand it to Yamuna and Ganga and try similar initiatives there,” Parveen said from London. “A minimum flow rate in all these rivers is needed during peak nesting season to keep the sandbars isolated from the banks,” she added.
India is home to more than 90% of the global population of about 3,000 Indian Skimmers, known for their bright orange bills and for skimming the surface of rivers by inches to catch fish. The birds nest on sandbars, mid river islands that appear seasonally. Even small changes in river flow patterns can result in complete nesting failure.