As we enter 2023, we look at our milestones, large and small, to put together the Sanctuary 2022 Impact Report. The report is also a glimpse into the commitment and ethos that has guided over four decades of our efforts at the tri-junction of biodiversity, economics and climate change.
Our stories, travelogues, features, photo essays, campaigns, and events continue to offer readers insight into the current state of India’s wilds and the most pressing conservation issues in the country. Our April 2022 issue highlighted the work of women-identifying conservationists, researchers, and on-ground field staff who are making an impact in their area of study and protecting the future of our planet. Almost all of our articles were written by or featured brilliant women working in conservation – from speleologists and conservationists to filmmakers and educators. Our October 2022 issue was dedicated to understanding how tourism can be a compelling incentive for communities, governments and business to support wildlife conservation. Through every issue, our mission, formed more than four decades ago, remains the same – to bring people together and empower them to enable collective action.
We have been blessed to be supported by many who share Sanctuary’s dream. Sanctuary, which started as a magazine four decades ago, is now a veritable movement with a network of over one million people, young and old. Ours has been a long and very fulfilling journey, one that we are sworn to continue and are committed to forever.
– Bittu Sahgal
Kids for Tigers, Sanctuary’s environmental education programme, is our commitment to show young people that better planet management, and cooperation will offer future food, water, social and economic stability, and prepare us for the trials of life. We continue to extend the programme to more cities and work with educators and students to shape them to become environmental leaders and planet protectors.
The offshoots of this programme – the Ranthambhore Village Contact Programme and the Bagh Sankalp and Bagh Bachao Initiative in Sundarban and Kolkata are focused efforts that are seeking to improve the lives of women and children in villages surrounding the tiger reserves.
Mud on Boots, our unique booster programme designed to recognise and support grassroots
conservationists across India, has completed six years and now spans 14 states and two union territories across the country. The programme is led by 26 project leaders and two small grantees.
COCOON Conservancies, our pilot rewilding programme, is now seven years old. Having demonstrated biological and social proof of concept, we now have more such projects on the anvil.
Seek Sanctuary, a college contact programme, supported by Carbon Copy and Morningstar, will design transformative experiences for the youth of India to prepare them to make more informed, effective and sustainable decisions, in and out of campuses.
The Sanctuary Debate 2022, conducted since 2017, was held on June 18, 2022 at the NCPA’s iconic Experimental Theatre in Mumbai. Justice Gautam Patel, Mumbai High Court, took charge as Chair of the House. The question for this year’s Debate was “Do YOU Believe That Environmentalists Have Become Merchants of Dystopia and Doom?”.
As one of India’s leading environmental organisations, the Sanctuary Nature Foundation (registered in 2015), is committed in its mission to protect our wildernesses and to create a safe, healthy and equitable world. And in this, we seek your continued support in 2023. It is the support of readers and well-wishers such as yourself that we are able to do what we do.
Please note: The Sanctuary Nature Foundation is a section 8 Company registered under the Indian Companies Act, 2013 and Section 12A of Income Tax Act, 1961. All donations are eligible for tax deduction under section 80-G.
Download the full report below.
