This year's 28 winning teams, selected from 400 applicants, will work on global biodiversity issues in 23 different countries. Projects range widely in scope from the conservation of the Trinidad piping-guan bird to protecting Darevsky's viper snake in Armenia, to reducing the threats to nesting leatherback turtles in Gabon.

Award winners will be recognized at a ceremony held tonight at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. The ceremony will feature renowned biologist and environmentalist Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, and will be hosted by Iain Conn, BP Group Executive Officer.

The highest grant level of $75,000, the Consolidation Award, is awarded to established projects previously supported by the Programme that have shown exceptional conservation progress and have developed strong, reciprocal relationships with the communities in which they work. Marsh deer that find refuge on floating islands in Argentina, the critically endangered Philippine crocodile, and a Kenyan community that depends on the sustainable harvesting of forest products will all benefit from the work being carried out by this year's three Consolidation Award winners.

The Programme has provided annual support to teams of conservationists in their early careers for 15 years. In the past 5 years alone, BP Conservation Programme's award winners have described approximately 25 species new to science, rediscovered 3 bird species thought extinct, and have influenced the environmental awareness of countless local communities. Teams have frequently collected the first essential baseline data in areas overlooked by professional scientists, or completed the first action towards significantly reducing a threat to a species or habitat. For 86% of past pro
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Contact: Jaimye Bartak
bart01@bp.com
202-912-1709
Conservation International
23-Jun-2005