Wildlife Trust of India

WTI has a diverse team of nearly 150 professionals, including conservation biologists, sociologists, and wildlife veterinarians, who strive to protect India’s wildlife.

India is home to an extraordinary variety of species and ecosystems, but due to gaps in knowledge and research, there has been limited conservation effort to protect its amphibians and halt their steep decline.

India’s amphibian population has been decreasing for decades due to habitat loss, chemical pollution of hill streams, degradation of wetlands, and negative attitudes perpetuated by local myths toward amphibians that have led to a reduction in conservation support.

WTI’s Amphibian Recovery Project aims to help revive the population of threatened amphibians. Staff working on the project will conduct population assessments and strengthen populations through conservation translocations to reduce direct and indirect threats to the species and its habitat.

The Western Ghats, a mountain range extending over 160,000km2 on the western coast of India, is a global hotspot for amphibian biodiversity; more than 100 new amphibian species have been described from this region alone in the last decade. As a result, there is a huge need for research into the species found here, and what their conservation needs are.

WTI is addressing the issues faced by amphibians in the region by carrying out baseline population research to assess their IUCN green status scores (which indicates the extent to which a species is depleted or recovered compared to its historic population level) and threat identification for target amphibian species. Alongside this monitoring work, and training programmes for staff and students, WTI is also developing captive breeding programmes and implementing amphibian-friendly land management in plantations and neighbouring forest reserves and National Parks.

As part of Synchronicity Earth’s Amphibian Programme, we support WTI’s Amphibian Recovery Project to stabilise and increase threatened amphibian populations in the Western Ghats.