The J. Paul Getty Award for Conservation Leadership is an annual award recognizing outstanding leadership in global conservation. It was established by J. Paul Getty and has been administered by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) since 2006. The award is unique because it includes a $200,000 cash prize that goes towards funding graduate fellowships in conservation-related fields. The award rotates annually between three categories: political leadership, scientific leadership, and community leadership.
Currently, the award is administered by the World Wildlife Fund on behalf of the Getty family. Conservation organizations worldwide submit nominations to the WWF and winners are selected by an impartial panel of judges from the conservation community. The Getty Award recognizes achievement in three annually rotating categories: political leadership in conservation (2006), leadership in conservation science (2007), and community leadership in conservation (2008). The 2009 Getty Award will mark the beginning of the second rotation by recognizing outstanding achievements in political conservation leadership.
The prize was first instituted by philanthropist and businessman J. Paul Getty in 1974 as the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize. Initially, the prize had the broad aim to recognize "outstanding contributions to international conservation" but was renamed in 2004 to reflect a restructuring of the award to "give it greater focus and strengthen its impact on conservation."<sup>[1]</sup> The newly established J. Paul Getty Award for Conservation Leadership was awarded for the first time in 2006.
In 1983 the Wildlife Conservation Prize was presented to the awardees by President Ronald Reagan at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. According to Russell E. Train, the president of the World Wildlife Fund in the United States at the time, Reagan referred to the Getty Award as the "Nobel Prize for conservation."