The Thing About Wildlife

This week I’m in conversation with the thoughtful and deeply grounded partnership of Devaki Nair and Manikandan R, part of the 2023 cohort of the Coexistence Fellowship. Manikandan, or Mani, is from Gudalur in Tamil Nadu, and brings with him a rich, lived understanding of the landscape—its people, histories, and more-than-human worlds. Having worked closely with local communities over the years, h...

This week I'm in conversation with the deep, strong and heartwarming partnership of Amir Chhetri and Priyanka Das, both part of the 2022 cohort of the Coexistence Fellowship. Amir hails from a forest village in northern West Bengal, and his indigenous knowledge on the biodiversity of the landscape and skills in community engagement are unparalleled. From a young age, Amir has worked with the F...

This week I'm in conversation with the unlikely but effective partnership of Sunil Harsana and Nitesh Kaushik, both part of the 2022 cohort of the Coexistence Fellowship. Sunil is a homegrown conservationist from Mangar Bani who has spent over a decade of his life preserving the floral and faunal diversity in the (NCR)-Aravallis region, the last remaining natural forest of this landscape. He h...

This week I'm in conversation with the spirited Avantika Thapa. She was part of the first cohort of the Coexistence Fellowship, and went through the programme with her partner, Chandra Maya Sharma. Avantika hails from the hills of Darjeeling and has been knowingly and unknowingly linked with nature from a young age. Serendipity and more kind humans along the way helped her find her footing, an...

Dive into a thought-provoking conversation with one of the Coexistence Fellowship pairs - Mahesha & Vinay - in our very first episode of Season 6, where we discuss the importance of viewing the world through multiple ways of knowing, redefine what we mean by 'science' and look closer at community-held knowledge and indigenous practices in wildlife management and conservation! This seas...

Today we bring you you an enthu-cutlet conversation with the excitable and passionate Sayee Girdhari. With important nudges from the universe towards the world of botany through happy coincidences and crucial mentors, Sayee fell deeply in love with trees. After spending some pivotal time working with the Karnataka state biodiversity board and Terracon Ecotech exploring the plant world across a ran...

Today I bring you you a warm and wholesome conversation with the incomparable Nitya Satheesh. She's had a fascinating journey within the wildlife space and has contributed to a slew of disciplines within the field, but most notably in the environmental education sector. We recorded this episode a while ago while she was a Senior Program Manager at the Centre for Wildlife Studies for several years,...

Today's episode features the wonderful Shweta Shivakumar with whom we continued on our Season 5 journey hitting upon our recurring themes of coexistence and living alongside wildlife. Shweta worked on a fantastic PhD at the Centre for Wildlife Studies that focused on attacks by big cats on people. The case study of Shweta's work delved into the spatiotemporal patterns of leopard attacks on people...

Today, I'm in conversation with India's foremost historian, Dr Ramachandra Guha: an environmentalist, prolific writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental history, and is an important authority on the history of modern India. Many of you may know him through his writings, like Environmentalism, that I first had the pleasure of read...

This is the first of two episodes recorded in the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunachal Pradesh, with the fantastic field staff that works with Dr Umesh Srinivasan. This episode features two young women who joined the team three years ago - Dema and Aiti (Kanchi) - who have since become invaluable members of the research teams that conduct bird research in this mountainous landscape!

Today's guest is a very cool spider specialist and all-round natural history enthusiast with a penchant for storytelling, photography and zooming into every living being in every environment he finds himself in: Samuel John. John is someone who first made strides in the corporate sector as he began his career, and within the last decade, decided he wanted to switch gears entirely! He is currently...

Today we're in conversation with Alissa Barnes - a marine biologist who wears several hats - from illustrator and social scientist to diver and shark anatomy specialist! She has been working to understand elasmobranch fisheries since 2015, and much of her work has focussed on gathering baseline information about fishing practices across multiple states along the west coast and understanding the dr...

Dhee is a researcher interested in the human dimensions of wildlife conservation, specifically the psychological and socio-cultural factors that shape people's perceptions towards wild animals. Currently, she is the Program Manager for the Coexistence Fellowship Programme. She continues to be curious about human-wildlife entanglements and how they shape and get shaped by stories, social instit...

Rushikesh Chavan tells us about how he's been diving deep into large-scale conservation issues ever since he got into this field a couple of decades ago. He's worked across 19 states and spearheaded campaigns that have become milestones in Indian conservation. Currently the head of The Habitats Trust, he has spent several years with the Bombay Natural History Society and the Wildlife Conse...

Today, I'm in conversation with Priyadarshini Panchapakesan - a young English language school teacher who grew up inspired by the nature around her in Kodaikanal. Her fascination for the natural world, concern for the environmental issues she observed over time, and love for writing have led her to create and publish several storybooks for children - from short stories to novellas that explore...

Today, I am joined by an old friend - Tarun Menon - birder supreme. Having completed his masters from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, he's now at the tail end of his PhD at the Indian Institute of Science, where he is studying altitudinal migrations of birds in the Eastern Himalayas.

The spaces of wildlife and conservation are home to LOTS of queer-identifying individuals around the world, each one doing inspiring and important work. The risks of being openly and visibly LGBTQIA+ are, unfortunately, still very real - a topic that we have been discussing since June on The Thing About Wildlife, and in our safer silos like the Queer Wildlifers' Circle. Each voice MATTERS. Eve...

Welcome back to our new series: The Thing About Pride. These are episodes showcasing the work and lived experiences of queer or LGBTQIA+ identifying persons in the fields of ecology and conservation. On our fourth episode, I bring to you a professional diver and marine biologist turned queer-affirmative sex educator - Tanisha RK. This was an episode that rang close to home in multiple ways, as Tan...

Welcome back to our new series: The Thing About Pride! On our third episode, I bring to you a marine biologist and conservationist who truly wants to do it all - and within the last decade, has worked systematically towards making that a reality! Avik Banerjee is currently a Project Manager at Willdife Conservation Society -- India's Marine Programme. From understanding dolphin interactions wi...

On this episode, I speak with 3 fabulous queer wildlifers - all of whom you've heard from before during our second season from early 2022! The fields of wildlife conservation and biology are full of diversity, and I have some of those examples for you today. First up, we have Taniya Gill, who you first met in episode 16: The Thing About Personalities. Taniya is a doctoral candidate from the De...

Welcome to a new series within this podcast: The Thing About Pride. These are episodes showcasing the work and lived experiences of queer or LGBTQIA+ identifying persons in the fields of ecology and conservation. First up, on today's episode, I speak with Nisha Bhakat about her fantastic work studying birds in tea estates of Bengal, her journey in the intersection of being a wildlifer and a qu...

Malika Virdi is an urban citizen turned farmer who co-founded Maati Sanghthan, a women’s collective, in Sarmoli, Munsiyari. This collective actively works to fight against the growing violence against women, and focuses on improving community wellbeing through an environmental lens. Siddharth Negi is one of the founders of the Uttaranchal Youth and Rural Development Centre, or UYRDC, where he work...

This is the first of two very special bonus episodes produced in collaboration with the Sydney Environmental Institute and the India and Bharat Together NGO. Together, we explore the on-ground consequences of climate change in the western himalayas, and what they mean for the future of people and habitats of these regions. In our first episode - The Thing About Glacial Melts, through an introspect...

Dr Sahir Advani is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Maine. While he works at a larger, global scale now, we dipped into his experiences from the pre-pandemic era for this episode, from when he conducted his doctoral work across the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Sahir is interested in finding sustainable solutions to coral reef associated fisheries and the export markets driv...

Today's guest is Mahi Mankeshwar - a cetacean biologist who has one of the most natural affinities to the marine space that I've ever encountered. She was one of the first people to systematically document the diversity of marine mammals around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, with a focus on cetaceans - that is, dolphins and whales. Her work across the islands has led to some of the most...