Presented at the Annual Meeting of SCB at San Jose, California, USA, on Saturday evening, 24 June 2006, the award was received by NCF’s senior ecologist Dr. T. R. Shankar Raman. The Society for Conservation Biology, with over 10,000 members in 128 countries, is regarded as the leading professional society in the world for those seeking to conserve biological diversity. SCB publishes the internationally recognized journals Conservation Biology and Conservation in Practice. Each year SCB presents five Distinguished Service Awards to organizations and individuals who have made outstanding contributions to advancing the science and practice of conserving the Earth’s biological diversity.

NCF is the first institution from India to be a recipient of the SCB Distinguished Service award. The award was conferred stating “Few organizations in India practice conservation with the scientific rigor, focus, and imagination that the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) uses to effect sustainable conservation. NCF’s small, young, but very effective team has already provided new ideas or challenged existing ideas to ensure the growth of conservation thought. Their work has resulted in discovery of new species and is resulting in the restoration of many habitats using a combination of science and outreach that is presently unsurpassed in the region. NCF’s vision is now leading to the addition of mature scientists to the region’s workforce of conservation biologists.”