BELINDA WRIGHT

Tiger conservationist and wildlife campaigner, Belinda Wright is the Founder and Executive Director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). Born in Calcutta (Kolkata), she has spent her entire life working with wildlife in India. Before turning to full time conservation work in 1994, Belinda was a wildlife photographer and an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker who worked for many years for National Geographic. Since then, she has pioneered investigations into the illegal wildlife trade in the Indian Subcontinent, helped expose the trade in tiger parts, and has been instrumental in the arrest of hundreds of wildlife criminals. In 2005, she was a member of the team that revealed the magnitude of the big cat skin trade in Tibet. WPSI supports site and species-specific conservation projects throughout India, and Belinda is a member of a number of government wildlife committees.

Belinda has received various awards for her work as a conservationist, among them the OBE in 2003 and the Carl Zeiss Wildlife Conservation Award in 2005. She was elected an Ashoka Senior Fellow in 2009.