Shivani Bhalla

Agnostic, Brainstormer, Concerned citizen, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Environmentalist, Event planner, Explorer, Photographer, Scientist, Single

Dr Shivani Bhalla Born and raised in Kenya, Shivani believes the key to lion conservation is working in partnership with local communities. She founded Ewaso Lions in 2007 to promote continued co-existence between carnivores and people - a project that she now co-leads with her team. Together with her team, she works with communities to reduce livestock loss to carnivores, and monitors the existing lion population within the Samburu-Isiolo landscape in northern Kenya. Shivani, with her team, have created successful community led-programmes including Warrior Watch, Mama Simba, Lion Kids Camps and Kura’s Pride. Shivani’s commitment to Kenyan conservation has earned her a 2023 Gold Award from the Whitley Fund for Nature and the 2014 Whitley Award, the 2013 Rabinowitz-Kaplan Prize for the Next Generation in Wild Cat Conservation, the ‘Africa’s Young Women Conservation Biologist of 2009′ award by the Society of Conservation Biology, the Virginia McKenna Award for Compassionate Conservation from the Born Free Foundation, and she has been named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. She is a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, African Lion Working Group, Kenya’s Large Carnivore Taskforce, a founding member of the Pride Lion Conservation Alliance and a Board member for the Kenya Pangolin Project. Shivani has a BSc. in Environmental Science from Lancaster University, received her MSc. in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from Edinburgh Napier University and was awarded her PhD in Zoology from Oxford University in 2017. Previously, she has worked for the Kenya Wildlife Service and Save The Elephants. Shivani moved to Samburu in 2002 and lives in the Ewaso Lions Camp in Westgate Conservancy with her 2 dogs, Kura and Nanyori.

My dogs - Kura and Nanyori! And all wildlife. I love exploring and seeing new places.

Conservation has long been dominated by top-down management and implementation approaches, where external organisations and academic institutions make decisions about land and wildlife management without meaningful community leadership. This undermines both conservation effectiveness and local autonomy, despite communities having the deepest understanding of their landscapes. Based on our experience in the context of community-led conservation, we are developing a framework which will address this fundamental disconnect by providing a clear pathway for shifting power to community leaders. We are working with partners to catalyse both an African and global movement for community-led conservation. While many organisations implement 'community-based' programmes, our framework goes beyond promoting local participation to providing a practical toolkit for truly putting communities at the forefront of conservation planning and decision-making. What will set our framework apart is its adaptability and inclusivity. By incorporating insights from multiple species programmes, countries, and contexts, we are creating an actionable roadmap for community-led conservation that can be applied across various environments and challenges. Given that Africa holds much of the world's remaining biodiversity, empowering communities to lead conservation efforts represents our best chance at addressing the global biodiversity crisis effectively.

Carnivore conservation, Community-led conservation, Human-wildlife Coexistence, Succession planning in conservation