(Wildlife SOS-INDIA, Copyright 2013)
Our MISSION is to “Create a Sustainable Future for India’s Wildlife and Wild Lands.”
We have three primary objectives as an organization and work closely under the auspices of the State Forest Departments and the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.
OBJECTIVES:
1) to rescue and rehabilitate injured and orphaned wildlife including individual animals from native and feral populations found anywhere on the Indian Subcontinent. We offer provisions consistent with the best health care and husbandry practices for animals placed at our rescue facilities.
2) to conserve native species through applied management and research efforts in collaboration with India’s Forest Department and to mitigate human-wildlife conflict involving any species regardless of its declared status in terms of conservation-sensitive concerns.
3) to complement on-the-ground animal rescue and species preservation programs with capacity building of indigenous people and outreach programs for Indian nationals and visitors to India.
The VISION of Wildlife SOS is to promote sustainable wildlife conservation initiatives and best animal welfare practices through rescue, rehabilitation, and/or restoration (reintroduction) of native wildlife populations on the Indian Subcontinent.
Current Focus Areas:
Targeted species include those representing threatened and endangered wildlife, as well as less conservation-sensitive species and populations living in eco-sensitive zones, other protected areas and unprotected areas. Unprotected areas may include those in heavily human populated and dominated landscapes.
Recent species of focus include sloth bears, Asiatic black bears, striped hyenas, Indian leopards and Asian elephants, herpetofauna of lowland dry deciduous forests and other Subcontinental ecosystems.
Ex Situ (Captive Programs Focused on Animal Welfare) We continue to rescue wildlife that have been poached or illegally apprehended for use in indigenous practices such as dancing of street bears and forced begging of domesticated street elephants by private owners.
We nearly extinguished the Kalandar practice of dancing street bears and continue to seek out incidental practices associated with sloth bears of which as few as 5,000 may remain in the wild. Such illegal activities are most common in remote transboundary regions.
In Situ (Field Programs Focused on Human-Wildlife Conflict) We recently launched a telemetry study after collaring a sloth bear that we translocated to the Suhelwa Wildlife Sanctuary near the Indo-Nepal border. The bear had been involved in a conflict situation in a village far south of the border……
Our leopard rescue and conservation program targets these magnificent big cats and removes them from conflict situations or escalating circumstances that could ultimately injure or kill both humans and leopards. We refer to such negative interactions as human-wildlife conflict.
WSOS-INDIA 