Wildlife Conservation Trust

Choosing the right route

• Researchers, conservationists and conservation organisations should look at the WCT-BEES Grants Programme.
• Forest Departments can ask the trust for equipment support. Startups and individual founders cannot use this route.

How applications work

• The 2026-27 round of the WCT-BEES Grants Programme is closed. Watch the programme page for the next round.
• Read the full eligibility rules on the programme page before you apply.
• For questions, use the contact page on the trust's website.

The Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) is a non-governmental organisation set up as a public charitable trust in Mumbai in 2002. It works in and around Protected Areas across India, and it funds small grants for conservation research and grassroots projects through its WCT-BEES Grants Programme.

How programmes work

The trust runs two routes. The first is the WCT-BEES Grants Programme, which awards small grants to promising researchers, conservationists and conservation organisations for conservation research and grassroots projects. Its full name is the WCT-Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Endangered Species Grants Programme. Its 2026-27 round is closed.

The second is a support route for Forest Departments. The trust provides suitable equipment, safety gear, basic amenities and vehicles to Forest Departments as and when needed. It is not a route for startups or individual founders.

Who can apply

The grant programme is open to researchers, conservationists and conservation organisations. The programme page sets out the full eligibility rules, and this page does not summarise them.

Scale

The trust says it works in and around Protected Areas across 23 states and four Union Territories, but its pages give different counts. The home page says 170 Protected Areas, and the Our Story page says 160. The two pages also give different shares of India's tiger reserves covered, 82 per cent and 79 per cent, and of its national parks and sanctuaries, 25 per cent and 24 per cent. The trust says its work is impacting a population base of approximately 3.5 million people.

Its forest staff figures differ too. The Our Story page says over 19,000 forest staff have been trained in effectively implementing the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. The impact page reports 12,000 forest officers trained in wildlife law enforcement. Read both as the trust's own claims.

Other figures the trust reports are over 4,500 forest staff trained in trauma management, over 18,700 forest guards and watchers reached through preventive health assessments under its Caring for Conservators health programme, and over 3,000 anti-poaching camps equipped in Protected Areas. The trauma training is meant to make staff safer in the field. Through its small grants, it reports supporting 28 conservation and research projects impacting more than 17 threatened species so far. It also reports funding over 60 grassroots NGOs.

Its Conservation Dogs Unit currently has three specially trained working dogs. They help detect species and the indirect evidence that wildlife and poachers leave behind. In the Bramhapuri Division of Chandrapur District, Maharashtra, the trust provides technical inputs to 49 villages, working with the Village Social Transformation Foundation. The trust describes this work as critical from the perspective of forest and wildlife conservation.

The trust also conducts large-scale tiger population estimation in wildlife corridors and habitats outside Protected Areas. The home page says six hundred rivers originate from, or are fed by, India's tiger-bearing forests. The Our Approach page says nearly 600. Both are the trust's own figures, and its pages do not agree on the exact number.

Campaigns

Its Save Our Tigers campaign, now in its fourth season, reports reaching over 100 million people worldwide, a figure that is the trust's own. Its first phase drew on public donations, alongside a contribution from the trust's chairman. Its second phase channelled funds towards equipping anti-poaching camps and strengthening local NGOs.

Recognition and registrations

The trust is registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 2010. It says donations to it are eligible for a 50 per cent tax deduction under section 80G of the Income-tax Act, 1961. It also says one of its projects won the UNDP Mahatma Award for Biodiversity 2023.