P K Sen
Lifetime Service Award (2002)
P.K. Sen has served as Field Director of the Palamau Tiger Reserve, where he managed to consolidate the protection of the forests he loved in the face of insurgency, timber and poaching mafias and the legendary shortage of funds and equipment that define the state of Bihar. Best known for his tough-talking, efficient ways, he rose to become the Director of Project Tiger and in his tenure, he forced the government to accept the tiger crisis that it had been denying for years. His frankness was best illustrated when during the Tiger 2000 Symposium in New Delhi, he announced before the world that India was losing one tiger a day to poachers and that over 1,50,000 sq. km. of tiger habitats had been lost to encroachment and miscellaneous habitat loss since the day Project Tiger was born in 1973. After his retirement from the Indian Forest Service, he continues to be actively involved in tiger conservation as head of the WWF Tiger Conservation Programme, planning and implementing programmes in tiger habitats across the country.