Women on a wilderness mission

[Maya Mahajan]

Women on a wilderness mission

Ashlin Mathew

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Wildlife conservation is no longer a male domain as more women are getting inspired to enter rough terrain and do their bit to save the vanishing animals.

Wildlife journalism grabs her

She has used her camera to showcase the environment and wildlife issues for the past four years even though Juhi Chaudhary says she is a "late bloomer" in the field of conservation.

"I wasn't always passionate about wildlife. During my college days, I chanced upon Sanctuary Asia magazine and that was it! I was instantly in awe of wildlife and the complex web of life. I was so driven by passion that I joined Sanctuary Asia for their Kids for Tigers campaign and campaigned for nearly 3 years to save tigers. I joined media because I felt that that there were so many wildlife issues that needed attention," she declares.

Our poster lady for conservation 

She is India's poster lady for wildlife conservation, the recipient of the 10,000th grant of the National Geographic Society to a conservation biologist. Dr Krithi Karanth's aim is to assess human-wildlife conflicts in five parks of India's Western Ghats. Daughter of wildlife biologist and conservationist, Ullas Karanth, Krithi saw her first tiger and leopard at age 3.

"Although a lot of my childhood was spent in the field with my father, I resisted doing the same work and it was only during my masters at Yale that I decided to do a research project in Bhadra, which led to my interest in becoming a field based conservation biologist," declares Krithi.

Today Krithi works on human dimensions of conservation, such as human-wildlife conflicts, land use change and people-park relationships. Having worked for over a decade as a conservationist, this 33-year-old says that working in India presents some challenges as it is a male-dominated field. Yet India is at a critical point, says Krithi, as we have just 4 per cent of protected areas to support most of the wildlife. "The economy is growing and throwing up new challenges in the process, which seriously threaten the last of our wild places. Urban Indians visit parks to view wildlife frequently and must be more conscious of their impact," adds Krithi.

The deep blue sea beckons 

Unlike those who go there just for a dip in the pristine ocean, Tasneem Khan lives in the Andaman and Nicobar Island as part of their environmental team (ANET). Most of her work is with coastal habitats that include reef systems, intertidal areas, mangroves and littoral forests. However, ANET does and has done work specific to sea turtles such as leatherbacks, the salt water crocodiles, the yellow-lipped sea krait and the fisheries sector.

Tasneem says she is passionate about her work. "It stems from spontaneity," she says. " The easiest way to relate to conservation tends to be for the sake of our need as human beings," she declares.

"From a larger perspective, the concept is important purely to allow the system to function and sustain itself - we ought to operate as part of the natural system, rather than appoint ourselves as those capable of restoring something we have exploited and destroyed."

Chasing matters of protection 

She gets a high from spotting a new bird species or gazing at flying squirrels gliding by the moonlight in Dandeli. Being a Goa girl, Nandini Vello grew up in a green paradise and was drawn to the outdoors and wildlife conservation right from the start.

She did her masters in wildlife biology and conservation with Wildlife Conservation Society-India Programme and National Centre for Biological Sciences. "As a wildlife biologist, I have interacted with inspiring people like Ajith Kumar, Ullas Karanth and Mahesh Rangarajan," she says. Her studies involve mammals, different species of deer, wild pigs, porcupines and also larger birds like hornbills. She wants to understand how they respond to protection through governmental agencies like the forest department versus protection by resident communities.

Most of the challenges faced by Nandhini are related to being a woman in a male dominated area. " The attitude to women has not changed. Most men I meet in the field tell me that I won't be able to climb or go far away because I am female."

Out to save the hog deer of Assam 

She grew up in a small town and loved watching the colourful birds in her backyard. Alolika Sinha's mother taught her the vernacular names for them while she was a child, but she is a late starter when it comes to taking conservation seriously. It was only during her graduation that Alolika acquainted herself with wildlife conservation efforts in the country, particularly those in Assam. "The more I read about this, the more I felt that I need to be out there. I started venturing into forests as a part of winter camps, and wildlife surveys further cemented my interest and motivated me to pursue higher studies in this field," says Alolika.

After her masters, she joined Aaranyak, a society for biodiversity conservation in Northeast India, and has been working with them since. She works with hog deer, Axis porcinus, in Assam and is also interested in working with the cervids of northeast India. Alolika says she wants to espouse them as a unique entity rather than merely considering them a prey for big cats only. Gaining an insight about the effect of habitat fragmentation on this animal is another area of interest for this late starter.

Mysterious mermaids of the ocean grab her imagination 

She studies large marine mammal of the Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago called dugongs, with the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF). There are probably less than 50 of these "mysterious mermaids of the ocean" left.

Researcher Elrika D'souza is stationed in the Andamans and Nicobar islands and says she is living her dream. "Research in the field of marine biology has been my dream and wildlife conservation is just the next step," says Elrika.

She has her heart set on saving fishing cats  

Daughter of an avid nature lover, 25 year old Tiasa Adhya grew up reading books by E.P. Gee, Corbett and Kenneth Anderson and enjoyed documentary films aired on Animal Planet and Nat Geo too. Soon enough, she realised that she wanted to go in for wildlife conservation. "Conservation is important because without it endangered species cannot be saved from the clutches of a drive for industrialisation and resource exploitation," she says.

Tiasa works with an endangered, medium-sized felid found in South Asia, called the fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus). She first sighted this animal during a project in the Sunderbans and is now studying the animal in human-dominated landscapes of West Bengal, with the support of the WWF Small Grants Programme, the first project of its kind.

This is no easy task: the fishing cat is an elusive and nocturnal creature, and Tiasa had to spend nights beside ponds to spot it. She met resistance from the villagers, who were not accustomed to a single woman being outdoors by herself at night. But then a local politician helped raise awareness about her cause. While there are no population estimates, according to data collected by Tiasa's group, 27 fishing cats have been killed in the last 18 months from Howrah and Hooghly districts of West Bengal.

In search of a sanctuary 

She works with Sanctuary Asia, writing about every animal in the subcontinent from the tiger to the termite and was a part of the team selected to go for the Inspire Antarctic Expedition in 2011 with 2041, an organisation working to preserve the South Pole. 24-year-old Swati Hingorani feels that protecting an animal such as the tiger is symbolic of much more. "By protecting a tiger you protect its forest home, the countless animals living in it, and our country's purest water sources. This in turn, helps people living far from the forests because this is where their water comes from," she adds.

Conservation is not a luxury but rather a survival imperative for India. "The tiger is dying, the snow leopard is in trouble, the ocean levels are rising and migratory birds are in trouble because their wetlands are vanishing," declares Swati.

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