Frederick Walter Champion (born 24 August 1893 in Surrey, UK; died 1970 in Scotland) was an English forester, who worked in British India and East Africa. In the UK and India he became famous in the 1920s as the first wildlife photographer and conservationist.
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Champion grew up in a family of nature lovers. His father was the English entomologist George Charles Champion, his brother Sir Harry George Champion was also a forester, well-known for classifying the forest type of India. Champion came to India in 1913 to serve in the Police Department until 1916. During World War I he served in the British Indian Army.
After returning from the war he was appointed Deputy Conservator of Forests with the Imperial Forestry Service in the United Provinces of India.[1] Owing to his experiences during the war, he abhored shooting and killing and blisteringly criticised sport hunting. He preferred shooting wildlife with a camera in the Sivalik Hills and pioneered camera trapping: in the 1920s he developed cameras triggered by trip wires. Using flashlight as well, he obtained dozens of remarkable night-time photographs, which are among the first of wild tigers, leopards, sloth bears, dholes 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 habitats. He strongly believed in the protectionist role of the forest department in India[2] and 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, 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 in 1957.[3]
When India became independent in 1947, Champion moved to East Africa, where he continued to work as a forester until he retired.
Excerpts of his article What is the Use of Leopards? at Leopards .:. wild-cat.org