On her Wikimedia profile page, Ananya Mondal describes herself thus: “I'm professionally a Clinical Nutritionist. I am doing photography because I just love to CLICK. In photography, my special love is shooting Butterfly and colourful flowers.”
That love for photographing butterflies prompted the Wikimedia Foundation-funded Wiki Loves Butterfly (WLB) project, and earned her the sobriquet Butterfly Wikimedian, and a glittery sash as the first ever winner of the Wikimedian of the Year Rich Media Award.
(Two other Indians - Jay Prakash and Dr Netha Husain - are among the seven awardees of this year’s Wikimedian of the Year award.)
For Kolkata-based, Ananya (known by her username ‘Atudu' on Wikimedia Commons), it all began in 2015 when her search for butterfly articles in Bengali Wikipedia yielded no result.
A year later, she started a science-based project on butterflies that has run four editions on Wikimedia sites, and resulted in 2,696 images being added to Wikimedia Commons, capturing 428 different butterfly species and subspecies.
Of these 2,696 images, 143 images (submitted by various photographers) have been deemed Valued Images (on Wikimedia, a valued image is considered to be the most valued illustration of its kind by the Commons community).
“The overall purpose of the Wiki Loves Butterfly project is to increase the amount of free license materials regarding available butterfly species of eastern and north-eastern part of India and related documentation and photographs in Wikimedia Commons and develop the quality and quantity of Wikipedia articles in this regard and particular documentation of rarely available species of any location of eastern and north-eastern part of India to be contributed in Wiki species,” Wikimedia states.
“Through Wiki Loves Butterflies, Ananya has not only exponentially grown the number of images of her favourite animal in the public domain, but she has created a fun and accessible way to welcome new people, especially students, into the movement. Her project has taken flight, and become a symbol of the incredible potential of rich media collaborations within our movement,” Jimmy Wales, Co-Founder of Wikipedia, said in the award citation.
Taking her love for butterflies further, Ananya wants to do a PhD in butterfly conservation. For she, like Ruskin Bond, knows that ‘when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful’.
Good to know:
Society for Education & Environmental Development (SEED) is organising a Butterfly Meet on September 25, 2021. Venue: Miao, Changlang District, Arunachal Pradesh. For details, email: seedasociety@gmail.com
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