Kazakh saiga researcher wins Whitley Awards 2023

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Photo: facebook.com/KazakhEmbassyUK
ASTANA. KAZINFORM Albert Salemgareyev, a saiga researcher from Kazakhstan, was named a winner of the 2023 Whitley Awards, Kazinform correspondent reports.

On Wednesday evening, UK fundraising and grant-giving charity Whitley Fund for Nature honored the contributions of six conservationists. The awards ceremony was held at the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain.

One of the laureates is Albert Salemgareyev, member of the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan who received the award for his contribution to the efforts to conserve the saiga population, whose number exceeds 1.3 million to date.

«Working together with the Royal Veterinary College and the Food and Agriculture Organization, Albert and his team developed a scheme to detect and respond to future outbreaks of wildlife diseases,» a presentation from Albert Salemgareyev reads.

«Albert has been studying saigas since 2006. He leads also a satellite tagging program through the installation of collars with special transmitters on the saiga antelopes,» the Kazakh Embassy in the UK reports on its Facebook page.

Since 2009, a total of 186 saiga antelopes have been tagged, and the data obtained contributed to understanding the ways of seasonal movements of animals, their places of concentration during calving and rutting.

These data were used to create the Altyn Dala reserve and expand the area of the Irgiz-Turgai State Nature Reserve. The maps of saigas' migration routes are used in the planning of road infrastructure to reduce the risk of their negative impact.

The award was presented to the winners by Princess Anne, Patron of the Whitley Fund for Nature. The winners received a £40,000 grant to develop their projects.

Kenya’s Dr Shivani Bhalla was separately honoured with Whitley Gold Award for her work to secure a future for lions in northern Kenya amid the worst drought.


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