By Kausik Banerjee

Large carnivores have always been a source of fascination for people and our relationships with them vary from awe and inspiration to fear and loathing. More than any other animals, carnivores have forced us to move from ecosystem theory to ecosystem management and conservation with a focal shift from species to systems and from science vs. management to science and management. Large carnivores often provide the ultimate test of society’s willingness to conserve wildlife and thus have traditionally served as a charismatic conservation flagship worldwide. Nevertheless, recent assessments of the conservation status of carnivores present an alarming picture of ongoing declines and range contractions.  Although carnivore conservation across the globe -- and particularly in an agrarian country like India -- is fraught with human dominations of potential habitats, poaching and fragmentation, the Gir lions in the westernmost state of Gujarat, India, have an altogether different story to narrate. 

By Kausik Banerjee

• Aga Khan Foundation -- International Scholarships 2014-2015 The Aga Khan Foundation supports programs in rural development, broadly defined, in a number of developing countries. It provides scholarships and loans for postgraduate studies to outstanding students from the developing world, with priority for masters studies. The Foundation also considers applications for PhD programs in certain circumstances. Applications are invited from the following nationalities: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, and Uganda. The application deadline is 31 March 2014. More details can be procured from http://www.akdn.org/akf_scholarships.asp. 

By Kausik Banerjee
Nature Kaleidoscope is not only a voice of young researchers at WII, it has an edifying role as well. It has often been felt at WII that majority of early or mid-career students remain perplexed about the scopes and opportunities in the conservation field. Most common FAQs humming in the campus are like these: ‘what are the international forums (seminars, meetings) where I can discuss my findings’, ‘where and when should I write for a grant proposal as my project is terminating shortly’, ‘is there any training workshop or field visit course through which I can learn something new’ and so on. Sometimes a student knows about a conference, nevertheless slips to apply for it after forgetting the deadlines. BWII recognizes these and therefore we have come up with a relevant section (News and Opportunities) shown as a white button link in the right hand side of our blog page. We would attempt to make this a regular fortnightly column where our editorial team would inform the onlookers about the upcoming events and research grants in the conservation field. We would try our best to update you well in advance so as to enable you to grab these opportunities. We would also urge our readers to enrich our repository by regularly contributing such news bytes. Finally, on behalf of BWII I welcome you to this important section of our blog. Please keep an eye on this section and avail of some top opportunities in our field.