The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced twelve grants totaling more than $3.6 million for biodiversity conservation work in the Eastern Himalaya.

The grants are part of the foundation's effort to conserve the biological diversity of select focal areas in developing countries by helping to create and manage parks, increasing the skills of local governmental and non-governmental institutions and individuals, and strengthening environmental law and policy. In the Eastern Himalaya, which stretches nearly one thousand miles from Nepal to Yunnan Province in China, the foundation's grantmaking focuses on three regions: the Kangchenjunga-Sikkim landscape in Nepal and India, protected areas and a biological corridor system in Bhutan, and the Arunachal Pradesh-Yunnan landscape, which stretches from India into China.

"There is growing concern about the environment and biodiversity preservation within China," said foundation president Jonathan Fanton. "Some estimates place the number of civil society groups interested in conservation in the hundreds. MacArthur is concentrating its support on the rich forests of western Yunnan Province in China, part of the Himalaya region. The area is rich in species diversity and has some of the best primary forests found anywhere in the country."

For a complete list of recipients, see: http://www.macfound.org/announce/press_releases/4_21_2005.htm