New Delhi: Indian conservationists Barkha Subba and Parveen Sheikh have won the prestigious 2026 Whitley Awards for their work protecting Himalayan salamander habitat and community-led protection of Indian skimmer nesting sites on the Chambal River.
Through the Whitley Prize, Barkha will focus on seven of the most important rare and evolutionarily distinct amphibian breeding sites. “The main threat is habitat loss due to rapid urbanization, expanding tourism, modification of wetlands and invasive species,” Barkha said from London, where she received the award on Wednesday. There are approximately 30 breeding sites remaining locally – many of which are located outside protected areas.
Barkha, who is the scientific advisor to the 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 habitats, remove invasive species, and screen for a deadly fungal disease, as well as engage local residents in outreach programs that promote sustainable land use and eco-friendly tourism.
Endemic to India, Nepal and Bhutan, the Himalayan salamander, which can grow up to 17cm long and live up to 11 years, is widespread across Darjeeling’s cool, shaded wetlands and forest edges. 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 Saba said in a statement upon receiving the award. Salamanders return to their birth site to reproduce and lay eggs—a process known as philopatry, which makes them highly vulnerable to change in habitat and wetland health.
“The habitat of the Himalayan salamander in Darjeeling’s tea region is undergoing complex changes. Rising prices for Nepal tea, often marketed as ‘Himalayan tea’, have increased competition for properties at a time when climate change, erratic rainfall and aging farms have reduced yields. Companies focused on profits and diversifying economic activity are also snapping up older properties. At the same time, the region faces increasing environmental challenges, including landslides and soil degradation,” said a statement from the Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN). A UK-based charity says: “Erosion and shrinkage of freshwater resources are linked to development and the world’s wetlands are disappearing faster than any other ecosystem, and a fifth of them may be lost by 2050.”
Parveen was honored for the community-led ‘Guardians of the Skimmer’ initiative on the Chambal River. Through recruitment of local nest keepers and ongoing scientific monitoring, the nest’s survival rate has increased to 27% from 14% with the local population growing to about 1,000 individuals last year from 400 in 2017, WFN reported.
Once widespread throughout Southeast Asia, the Indian skimmer has disappeared from most of its historical range amid widespread degradation of riverine habitats. Globally, wetlands are disappearing faster than any other ecosystem, with rivers exhibiting an increasingly disturbed water cycle. According to a UN report, only a third of river basins had normal conditions in 2024, with water levels in two-thirds of them dangerously low or unusually high. With the Whitley Prize, Parveen, a scientist with the Bombay Natural History Society, will strengthen conservation in Chambal and expand the initiative to include key sites around Prayagraj, where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet.
“Local guardians help identify new sandbars, monitor nests, and prevent disturbances during the breeding season,” Parveen Shaikh said in a statement. “Some now proudly refer to the skimmers as ‘our birds’, reflecting a growing sense of ownership. This change in perception from indifference to stewardship was one of the most important outcomes of the project.”
“We worked in the Chambal region. We want to try to expand it to include Yamuna and Ganga and try similar initiatives there,” Parveen said from London. “A minimum flow rate is needed in all of these rivers during the peak nesting season to keep the sandbars isolated from the banks,” she added.
India is home to more than 90% of the world’s population of about 3,000 Indian skimmers, known for their bright orange beaks and for scraping the surface of rivers inch by inch to catch fish. The birds nest on sandbars and mid-river islands that appear seasonally. Even small changes in river flow patterns can lead to complete nesting failure.
