Launched as a legacy of the WildCats Conservation Alliance’s 2022 Year of the Tiger campaign, this annual award supports the professional development of early and mid-career conservationists working on big cat conservation projects funded by WildCats. The award is designed to strengthen local leadership and build long-term conservation impact by investing in the people at the heart of the work. This fund reflects our ongoing commitment to supporting local capacity, knowledge exchange, and the development of the next generation of conservation leaders.
2025 Awardees
Chiging Pilia
Professional Development Awardee 2025
Chiging Pilia will use the grant to study how cultural change and hunting practices affect tiger conservation in Arunachal Pradesh, combining camera trapping with Indigenous knowledge and ethnographic research.
Laksmi Datu Bahaduri
Professional Development Awardee 2025
Laksmi Datu Bahaduri will use the grant to attend the DESMAN course at Durrell Conservation Academy in 2026, building skills in species recovery and anti-wildlife trade efforts to support Sumatran tiger conservation in Indonesia.
Taisiia Marchenkova
Professional Development Awardee 2025
Taisiia Marchenkova will use the grant to attend the 2025 ICCB conference in Australia, where she will present research on Far Eastern leopard recovery and apply global insights to strengthen conservation strategies in Russia.
2023-2024 Awardee
Anna Klevtcova
Professional Development Awardee 2023/24
Anna Klevtcova, a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Ecology at the University of Florida, was our first Professional Development Award recipient. A conservationist from Russia’s Primorski region, Anna is researching human-Amur tiger coexistence. With WildCats’ support, she has completed two field seasons, developed a valuable media-based database on tiger-related incidents, and advanced her research despite fieldwork restrictions. Her work combines GIS, social science, and ecology to better understand and reduce tiger poaching in the Russian Far East.
