Winners of SCA Award for Excellence in Saiga Protection, In Memory of Joy Covey
The 2014 award is supported by the Wildlife Conservation
Network and Joy's family, to whom we are especially
grateful.
The award supports individuals or teams, from government or
from NGOs, who have shown particular dedication and outstanding
success in combating saiga poaching over the last 12
months.
The applicants were of excellent quality and to recognise
their extraordinary achievements we decided to give one main award
of $1,000 and two runner-up awards of $750, to be used as the
winners choose, to the following three nominees:
First prize: the
Anti-poaching team of the Irgiz-Turgay reserve,
Kazakhstan
The tireless conservation work of the Anti-poaching team of the Irgiz-Turgay
reserve has contributed to consistent growth in
the Betpak-Dala saiga population over the last 7
years.
Runner-up: the
Ranger team of the Stepnoi Reserve, Russia
The Ranger
team of the Stepnoi Reserve work in extremely
difficult circumstances to provide a safe haven for saiga in the
Northwest Pre-Caspian steppe.
Runner-up: Batsaikhan Baljinnyam, State
Environmental Inspector, Mongolia
Batsaikhan Baljinnyam's strong and collaborative leadership has transformed Mongolia's saiga ranger network into a regionally recognised model of law enforcement.
Congratulations to all three winners!