The grey ghosts
Meet Charudutt Mishra, fondly known as ‘Charu’, a 51 year old scientist and conservationist in India who has spent 25 years protecting wild snow leopards by placing local communities at the heart of his conservation work.
Charu grew up with a deep connection to nature fostered by his mother. He studied biology, then science and in 1997 travelled to the remote village of Kibber in Northern India, to research the elusive snow leopard as part of his PhD in ecology and conservation. He was determined to forge a career in field research, but one brutal moment changed the course of his life.
When a group of angry villagers took turns in ceremonially beating the carcass of a snow leopard that had preyed on their livestock, Charu was horrified. Unable to shake his anger, he approached a village elder to ask how a peaceful community could reconcile killing the creature. The elder responded that “while all creatures have a right to live, we have to do this to take care of our families and livestock.”
The conversation sparked a revelation. Realising that conservation wasn’t a question of willingness but capacity, Charu worked with the village to break the link between snow leopard predation and economic loss. He created India’s first community managed livestock insurance program, designed to share economic losses and reward herders who use an anti-predatory approach. Retaliation attacks fell to zero and Charu grew his mission, co-creating community wildlife reserves and other initiatives to strengthen local livelihoods.
Charu’s approach marked a turning point in conservation. In the late nineties fortress-style conservation, which involved evicting people from the territory of endangered animals, was gaining momentum. But Charu wanted to empower communities to live alongside the leopards, so he set about expanding his unique PARTNERS framework (Presence, Aptness, Respect, Transparency, Negotiation, Empathy, Responsiveness, and Support).
Since 2002 Charu’s community-led program has trained hundreds of conservationists and built 150 local partnerships to protect 150,000 km2 of habitat across five countries. Charu’s work also encouraged 12 snow leopard range countries to sign a landmark agreement in 2013 to increase protection.
Charu’s story is one of love before first sight. Snow leopards are so rare, he spent more than a decade fighting to protect them before he caught his first glimpse of a ‘grey ghost’ in the wild. But on a recent trip back to the Kibber nature reserve he helped create two decades ago, Charu spotted four leopards in just nine days.
This project addresses one significant gap in conservation worldwide – our ability to work effectively with local communities. People are willing to conserve nature. We just need to make them more able to do so.
