OUR CORRESPONDENT
Itanagar: Dr Panjit Basumatary from the Pakke Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Pakke-Kessang district of Arunachal Pradesh, was awarded with the ‘Animal Welfare Field Veterinary Award’ at the 24th International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Animal Action Awards held in London, United Kingdom, recently.
The global non-profit IFAW conferred the award to him in recognition of his outstanding contributions to wildlife rescue and rehabilitation efforts.
The IFAW Animal Action Awards celebrate the unsung heroes of animal welfare, honouring individuals who dedicate their lives to the protection and conservation of wildlife.
Dr Basumatary has been working with the Wildlife Trust of India for 14 years, working tirelessly to rescue, rehabilitate and release distressed and injured wild animals. He has hand-raised rhinos, elephants, clouded leopards, hoolock gibbon and numerous black bear cubs.
Additionally, he has published multiple scientific papers on issues related to the rehabilitation and release of wild animals. Throughout his career, Dr Basumatary has attended to around 3,000 individual wild animals across more than 250 species, including mammals, reptiles and birds. At the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation in Kaziranga (Assam), he and his team successfully hand-raised 26 orphaned greater one-horned rhino calves, with many rehabilitated back into the wild. Currently, Dr Basumatary serves as the manager and head of the Centre for Bear Rehabilitation and Conservation (CBRC) in the PTR.
It is India’s only facility dedicated to hand-raising and rehabilitating orphaned Asiatic black bear cubs. Since its establishment in 2002 by the Arunachal Pradesh forest department, the Wildlife Trust of India and the IFAW, the CBRC has successfully rehabilitated and released over 60 bear cubs back into their natural habitat in Arunachal.
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