Frederick Walter Champion (born 24 August 1893 in Surrey, UK; died 1970 in Scotland) was a British

forester A forester is a person who practises forestry, the science, art, and profession of managing forests. Foresters engage in a broad range of activities including ecological restoration and management of protected areas. Foresters manage forests to ...

, who worked in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

and East Africa. In the UK and India he became famous in the 1920s as one of the first wildlife photographers and

conservationists The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the f ...

Early life

Champion grew up in a family of nature lovers. His father was the English entomologist George Charles Champion. His brother Sir

Harry George Champion Sir Harry George Champion CIE (17 August 1891 – 20 June 1979) was a Geographer and forest officer in British India who created a classification of the forest types of India and Burma. He studied at New College, Oxford, and obtained a d ...

was also a forester, well known for classifying the forest types of India. Champion travelled to India in 1913 and served in the Police Department in East Bengal until 1916. He was commissioned into the British Indian Army Reserve of Officers (Cavalry branch) as a second lieutenant on 21 August 1916, promoted temporarily to captain on 8 March 1917 and to lieutenant on 21 August 1917. He saw service with the 31st Lancers and then he was appointed wing officer with the Kurram Militia on 8 March 1917, a

Frontier Corps The Frontier Corps ( ur, , reporting name: FC), are a group of paramilitary forces of Pakistan, operating in the provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to maintain law and order while overseeing the country's borders with Afghanist ...

unit based on the North West Frontier of India. He retired a lieutenant but was granted the rank of captain on 1 May 1922.

Commitment to conservation

After returning from the war, he joined the Imperial Forestry Service in the United Provinces of India and became Deputy Conservator of Forests. Owing to his experiences during the war, he abhorred shooting and killing and blisteringly criticised

sport hunting Trophy hunting is a form of hunting for sport in which parts of the hunted wild animals are kept and displayed as trophies. The animal being targeted, known as the "game", is typically a mature male specimen from a popular species of collectable ...

. He preferred shooting wildlife with a camera in the

Sivalik Hills The Sivalik Hills, also known as the Shivalik Hills and Churia Hills, are a mountain range of the outer Himalayas that stretches over about from the Indus River eastwards close to the Brahmaputra River, spanning the northern parts of the India ...

and pioneered

camera trap A camera trap is a camera that is automatically triggered by a change in some activity in its vicinity, like presence of an animal or a human being. It is typically equipped with a motion sensor – usually a passive infrared (PIR) senso ...

ping: in the 1920s he developed cameras triggered by

tripwire A tripwire is a passive triggering mechanism. Typically, a wire or cord is attached to a device for detecting or reacting to physical movement. Military applications Such tripwires may be attached to one or more mines – especially fragm ...

s. Using a flashlight as well, he obtained dozens of remarkable night-time photographs, which are among the first of wild

tigers The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living cat species and a member of the genus ''Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily preys on un ...

leopards The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant species in the genus ''Panthera'', a member of the cat family, Felidae. It occurs in a wide range in sub-Saharan Africa, in some parts of Western and Central Asia, Southern Russia, a ...

sloth bear The sloth bear (''Melursus ursinus'') is a myrmecophagous bear species native to the Indian subcontinent. It feeds on fruits, ants and termites. It is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, mainly because of habitat loss and degradation. ...

dhole The dhole (''Cuon alpinus''; ) is a canid native to Central, South, East and Southeast Asia. Other English names for the species include Asian wild dog, Asiatic wild dog, Indian wild dog, whistling dog, red dog, red wolf, and mountain wolf. It ...

s and other wildlife. He recognized that with good photographs of tigers, it was possible to tell individuals apart by their different stripe patterns. Champion was a passionate conservationist, before conservation became fashionable, and campaigned hard for protection of tigers and their forest

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s. He strongly believed in the protectionist role of the forest department in India. He championed the idea of limiting gun licenses, stopping motor-cars from entering Reserved Forests and reducing rewards for killing wildlife. His commitment to conservation inspired his friend

Jim Corbett Edward James Corbett (25 July 1875 – 19 April 1955) was a British hunter, tracker, naturalist, and author who hunted a number of man-eating tigers and leopards in the Indian subcontinent. He held the rank of colonel in the British Indian ...

, among other hunter-turned-conservationists. Together with Corbett, he was a founding member of India's first national park established in 1935, which was renamed to

Corbett National Park Jim Corbett National Park is a national park in India located in the Nainital district of Uttarakhand state. The first national park in India, it was established in 1936 during the British Raj and named ''Hailey National Park'' after William ...

in 1957.Rangarajan, M. (2006). India's Wildlife History: an Introduction. Permanent Black and Ranthambore Foundation, Delhi (). p. 72 When India became

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

in 1947, Champion moved to East Africa, where he continued to work as Divisional Forest Officer for

Kilimanjaro Mount Kilimanjaro () is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. It has three volcanic cones: Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world: above sea level and a ...

and the

Serengeti The Serengeti ( ) ecosystem is a Geography of Africa, geographical region in Africa, spanning northern Tanzania. The protected area within the region includes approximately of land, including the Serengeti National Park and several game res ...

until he retired.

Publications

*
With Camera in Tiger-land
'. Chatto & Windus, London 1927 *
The Jungle in Sunlight and Shadow
' Chatto & Windus, London 1934. Reprinted 1996 by Natraj Publishers, Dehra Dun, India. * "Preserving Wildlife in the United Provinces" No. 4, The United Provinces. ''Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society'' Vol. 37 (1934), pp. 104–110. Reprinted in: Thapar, V. (2001) ''Saving wild tigers, 1900-2000: the essential writings''. Permanent Black, Delhi. pp. 57–68
book preview
* "From the Photographer's Point of View" In: Jepson, S. (ed.) (1936). ''Big game encounters: critical moments in the lives of well-known shikaris''. H.F. & G. Witherby, London. pp. 30–36
book preview
* Correspondence: "The Protection of Wildlife". Indian Forester Vol. 55 (1939): 501–504.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Champion, F. W. 1893 births 1970 deaths Indian Army personnel of World War I British Indian Army officers 20th-century Indian photographers Indian conservationists British conservationists English foresters Imperial Forestry Service officers Indian nature photographers British people in colonial India British people in British Kenya Military personnel from Surrey

Early life

Commitment to conservation

Publications

See also

Further reading

References