The Thing About Wildlife (Ishika )

Manish is a phenomenal storyteller, who uses his lived experiences to talk about the people and ecology of the islands with extreme clarity. Our recording with Manish ran into hours, and so I'll be bringing his voice to you in two parts. In the first epsiode featuring Manish, The Thing About Discovering The Islands, he talks to us about how he stumbled into the Andamans nearly three decades ago, what it was about the place that got him involved in several projects there, how he came to know and live with the local communities intimately, introduces us to the who's who of early ecological and anthropological work in the islands, and provides us with a window into how he began working with restoration.

Tarun Nair is a herpetologist and conservationist associated with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore (but views expressed on this podcast are personal). He has worked extensively in river systems across North India, rallying around the enigmatic Gharial.

Key popular articles:

• Crocodile conservation doesn’t need a straw-man
• Saltwater crocodiles in the Andaman and Nicobar have a PR problem
• Of Government, God and Gharial: the ecological pogrom in Chambal's badlands

Key Journal articles:

• Rigorous gharial population estimation in the Chambal: implications for conservation and management of a globally threa-tened crocodilian
• River dolphin distribution in regulated river systems: implications for dry-season flow regimes in the Gangetic basin

Shownotes:

• Valley School and Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Madras Crocodile Bank Trust (MCBT)
• Gharial rivers: Chambal (primarily National Chambal Sanctuary), Son, Gandak, Tons, Betwa
• Dr Jagdish Krishnaswamy
• Imran Siddiqui and HyTiCoS
• Rural emmigration and conservation opportunities - papers shared by Tarun (An upside to globalization: International outmigration drives reforestation in Nepal | Implications of Rural–Urban Migration for Conservation of the Atlantic Forest and Urban Growth in Argentina)

Nishant is a behavioural ecologist who studies Asian elephants in a human-dominated landscape. He has completed his doctoral work from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore under Prof. Anindya ‘Rana’ Sinha . He is fascinated by the behavioural plasticity of large mammals in their changing environments.

Popular Writing:

1. Globetrotters of the Asian Elephant Society
2. This is Híristor’s story
3. Elephants form unusual all-male groups to survive human landscapes

 Journal Articles:

1. The Elephant in the City: The Trialectics of Space in the Rurban Elephants of Southern India
2. Usual Populations, Unusual Individuals: Insights into the Behavior and Management of Asian Elephants in Fragmented Landscapes
3. All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India

Show notes:

1. Dr. Anindya 'Rana' Sinha
2. What is it like to be a bat? An Essay by Thomas Negal
3. Governing the Commons: A Book by Eleanor Ostrom
4. Ecology Proposes, Behaviour Disposes
5. Postgraduate Programme in Wildlife Biology & Conservation

Nitya Prakash Mohanty is a herpetologist who has spent the last decade studying frogs and lizards, asking interesting questions about their patterns of invasion and sleep! He began his foray into wildlife with a master’s from the Wildlife Institute of India, wherein he studied spotted deer and frogs in the Andaman Islands. After a PhD and a postdoc in South Africa, Nitya is currently doing more post-doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Twitter: @NityaPM 

Popular Media:

• Mind the tadpoles: No survival of native larval frogs in the presence of invasive Indian bullfrog tadpoles 
• Indian bullfrogs take to invasive behaviour early in Andamans  
• Sleep Ecology of Reptiles (video)  

Journal Articles:

• Non-native populations and global invasion potential of the Indian bullfrog Hoplobatrachus tigerinus: a synthesis for risk-analysis 
• Shrinking before our isles: the rapid expression of insular dwarfism in two invasive populations of guttural toad (Sclerophrys gutturalis)  
• Watch out where you sleep: Nocturnal sleeping behaviour of Bay Island lizards  
• Impact of invasive spotted deer (Axis axis) on tropical island lizard communities in the Andaman archipelago 

Shownotes:

• Nandankanan Zoological Park  
• Postgraduate Programme in Wildlife Science, Wildlife Institute of India  
• Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team  
• NITI Aayog's megacity plan for Little Andaman alarms conservationists 

Vena Kapoor works with the Education and Public Engagement Programme at Nature Conservation Foundation in Bengaluru. She is interested in ecology, nature education research and outreach, looking for and documenting spiders and other 6 and 8 legged creatures. 

Twitter: @venadavenu

Popular Writing:

• Spiders: the weavers and stalkers among us
• Nature Underfoot: Wild Flora and Fauna on City Pavements and Waysides
• Life on the Vertical: Exploring Nature on City Walls
• Vena's 6 favourite species of spiders from the Western Ghats
• Off to see spiders! - a children's book

Journal Articles:

• Restoring Rainforest Fragments: Survival of mixed-native species seedlings under contrasting site conditions
• An assessment of spider sampling methods in tropical rainforest fragments of the Anamalai Hills
• Effects of rainforest fragmentation and shade-coffee plantations on spider communities

Shownotes:

• Institutions: Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems, Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) and their rainforest restoration project, Bird Count India, Cafe Oikos, MPhil in Conservation Leadership at Cambridge-UK, Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) 
• People: Harini Nagendra, Seema Mundoli and Renee Borges
• Wildlife: Jatropha (plant), Aphid (insect), Lynx spider (spider), Indian Beech or Pongamia (tree)
• GISS in bird-watching parlance is what can only be described as the "vibe" of a species of bird

Ayushi Jain is a National Geographic Photo Ark EDGE Fellow focusing on the endangered Cantor’s giant softshell turtle, which is part of the work she first began during her master's research. Her primary research interests lie in community ecology, behavioural ecology, and evolution of various morphological and physiological traits in reptiles. Ayushi’s project aims to collect baseline ecological data for Cantor’s giant softshell turtle and its habitat at locations in three South Indian states, and to use this data to develop a Conservation Action Plan for the species.

Instagram: @chelonia_crania | Twitter: @chelonia_crania

Articles:

1. Pieces for Sanctuary

2. Vanishing Act: The Slow Decline of Cantor’s Giant Softshell Turtle

3. Saving One of the Largest and Rarest Turtles from Extinction

4. Conserving the Cantor's Giant Softshell Turtle in Kerala

Dr Meghna Agarwala is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. Her work focuses on the intersection of forest ecology, conservation biology and livelihoods of local people.

Dr Agarwala is taking PhD students this year (2021-2022 admit)! Do write to her (meghna.agarwala@ashoka.edu.in) if you’re interested.

Key Journal Articles:

• Improved household living standards can restore dry tropical forests
• Untangling impact of de jure and de facto community-based management of natural resources (this article discusses elite capture and representative governance)
• Changes in the dry tropical forests of Central India with human use
• Impact of biogas interventions on forest biomass and regeneration in southern India
• Parks protect forest cover in a tropical biodiversity hotspot, but high human population densities can limit success (with Dr Meghna Krishnadas)
• Collateral damage: Impacts of ethno-civil strife on biodiversity and natural resource use near Indian nature reserves (with Dr Nandini Velho)
• Comparing compensation rules and practice to understand the goals and politics of wolf conservation

Shownotes:

Institutions and places: Wildlife Institute of India, Nature Conservation Foundation, Wildlife Trust of India, SERB or Science and Engineering Research Board, Simlipal National Park

People: Sumanta Bagchi, K Sivaramakrishnan, Lisa Curran, Maria Uriarte, Ruth DeFries, Joshua Ginsberg, Alfred Russel Wallace, Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi

In the first episode of our Andaman and Nicobar series, storyteller-supreme, Manish Chandi speaks to Ishika and Akshay about his early years in the islands through riveting anecdotes. Manish Chandi, an affiliate with the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team and Nature Conservation Foundation. In the last 25 years, Manish has worked on a wide range of projects in the region: herpetological surveys, forest restoration and anthropology - for his PhD, he lived with the Nicobarese people studying community sharing mechanisms and how they were disrupted by the 2004 tsunami.

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 Conservation Trust too.

Mrunal Ghosalkar, a National Geographic certified educator, began her conservation journey with the Nature Conservation Foundation by studying the occupancy of hornbills through interviews in northeast India. She later started a program called 'Janata Waghoba' in rural Maharashtra with Wildlife Conservation Society - India to build awareness about leopards in human-dominated landscapes across various stakeholders. She has also worked as a project coordinator for the wild shale EE program at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, and now, she is working as conservation education manager on the Great Indian Bustard Program with WCS.

Instagram: @mrunalghosalkar

YouTube: Mrunal has a couple of very informative documentaries up on her channel. Click here to check them out!

Multimedia Outreach & Shownotes:

1. Young protectors of Bandhavgarh

2. Earth Day Series: Wildlife Conservationist Mrunal Ghosalkar on Living With Leopards

3. Great Indian Bustard Project

4. Janata Waghoba: A Story of People and Leopards in Rural Maharashtra

5. Friends of the Feline

Chayant Gonsalves is a naturalist, birder, artist and all-round snake enthusiast. After completing his training in wildlife biology and conservation from the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, he has returned to his roots and innate love for urban biodiversity, which he continues to engage with through snake rescues, filmmaking, nature trails and art. 

Social media: Instagram @chayantgonsalves | Twitter @chayantg

Shownotes:

1. Living with snakes: a short YouTube documentary

2. Annotated checklist of the snakes of Bengaluru Urban District

3. Romulus Whitaker | Gerry Martin | Gowri Shankar

4. Face of a Spider - an essay by David Quammen

Welcome back to the second of our two-part chat with Vena!

Vena Kapoor works with the Education and Public Engagement Programme at Nature Conservation Foundation in Bengaluru. She is interested in ecology, nature education research and outreach, looking for and documenting spiders and other 6 and 8 legged creatures.

Twitter: @venadavenu

Popular Writing:

• Spiders: the weavers and stalkers among us
• Nature Underfoot: Wild Flora and Fauna on City Pavements and Waysides
• Life on the Vertical: Exploring Nature on City Walls
• Vena's 6 favourite species of spiders from the Western Ghats
• Off to see spiders! - a children's book

Journal Articles:

• Restoring Rainforest Fragments: Survival of mixed-native species seedlings under contrasting site conditions
• An assessment of spider sampling methods in tropical rainforest fragments of the Anamalai Hills
• Effects of rainforest fragmentation and shade-coffee plantations on spider communities

Shownotes:

• The Montessori model of education, The concept of climate grief, retaining hope in conservation and the conservation optimism story, the silent-valley agitation and what exactly is iNaturalist?
• People mentioned on the show: Suhel Quader, M D Madhusudan, Birute Galdikas, Diane Fossey
• Wildlife: Mantids, potter wasps, tarantulas, fig-fig wasp associations

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.

Welcome to The Thing About Wildlife - a podcast that digs deep into the personal lived experiences of people from the fields of wildlife biology and conservation. 

Madhuri Ramesh is a faculty member at the School of Development at Azim Premji University. Madhuri has worked in deserts, rainforests, coasts and islands, she’s a herpetologist who turned to political ecology for her PhD and later work. Her research in the Andaman Islands focuses on nature-society relations, and the consequences of these negotiations for conservation and sustainability.

Order The Living Museum today!

To know more about the book, head on over to our website.

This production and distribution of this book was made possible with the support of Bengaluru Sustainability Forum, Nagarathna Memorial Grant and published by the Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy and Learning.

Artwork for the book and the episode thumbnail by Sunaina Coleho.

Next full episode will be out tomorrow!

Misha Bansal works with the Nature Conservation Foundation. After doing a Bachelor’s in Biochemistry and a Master’s in Life Sciences, Misha fell in love with birds through some early research work in the Aravallis in Delhi where she grew up. Ever since, she’s worked with various organizations to facilitate outreach and outdoor learning, most currently with the Early Bird program. Through her work with NCF, she has been working towards helping people build a greater connect with nature. 

Twitter: @bansal_misha | Instagram: @little.brown.dove

Shiba Desor is a social scientist who worked with the Karen community in the middle Andamans  to set up the Andaman Karen Crafts initiative, a cooperative to promote cultural continuity and environmental conservation through weaving, artisanal crafts, tree nurseries and a local-cuisine restaurant. Shiba has previously worked with forest rights policy and livelihoods as well, and now continues to look inwards about how best to help and aid local communities sustain themselves and, perhaps, thrive.

Krishna Anujan is a community ecologist and nature enthusiast, and she's is studying the effect of biodiversity on tropical forest functioning in the Andaman Islands for her PhD at Columbia University. She regularly communicates science to the public through popular articles in English and Malayalam.

Twitter: @KrishnaAnujan

Popular Writing:

• What does the climate crisis mean for the Andaman Islands?
• Ecology and Natural History of the Andaman Islands (8-part series) 
• Foraging Food: Eating Wild in the Andaman Islands
• Scent of a forest: Inhaling the Wonder of Blooms, Leaves and Fruits
• Un-Gorilla, Un-Adventure: The Realities of Fieldwork

• Other articles by Krishna, including her series in Mathraboomi (Malayalam)

Publications:

• Trophic complexity alters the diversity–multifunctionality relationship in experimental grassland mesocosms
• Positive correlations in species functional contributions drive the response of multifunctionality to biodiversity loss
• Violet Cuckoo in the Andaman Islands

Shownotes:

• IISER-Pune, Divya Vasudev, Ramana Athreya, Nandini Velho, Ajith Kumar
• Angela Saini's Superior and Inferior
• Island Biogeography Theory
• The left-brain & right-brain idea is a myth
• Productivity (ecology)
• Garjan (Dipterocarpus sp.), Kala Lakdi (Diospyros sp.)
• File Drawer Problem (Publication bias / negative results)
• Women in ecology mentoring scheme (British Ecological Society)

Priya is an ecologist, with an interest in tropical forest diversity, dynamics and biogeography. She did her PhD on the biogeography and macroecology of small mammals in the Indian subcontinent. Her postdoctoral work was on African tropical forest-savanna dynamics. As part of her long-term research, she is interested in understanding forest recovery in northeast India and how human activities influence recovery. Besides research, Priya has been involved with organizing the Student Conference on Conservation Biology in Bangalore, and actively engaged with improving inclusivity in our field.

Twitter: @priya_tamma 

Popular Writing:

1. Personal Blog: Pangolin prophecies 
2. Shifting Our Gaze – Towards a Just, Inclusive Approach to Research in the Field

Journal Articles:

1. Climatic and geographic barriers drive distributional patterns of bird phenotypes within peninsular India  
2. Past influences present: Mammalian species from different biogeographic pools sort environmentally in the Indian subcontinent
3. Past climate and species ecology drive nested species richness patterns along an east-west axis in the Himalaya

Shownotes:

1. Intermediate disturbance hypothesis
2. Student Conference on Conservation Biology, Bangalore
3. Policy on Sexual Harassment at Azim Premji University

Nitya Prakash Mohanty is a herpetologist who has spent the last decade studying frogs and lizards, asking interesting questions about their patterns of invasion and sleep! He began his foray into wildlife with a master’s from the Wildlife Institute of India, wherein he studied spotted deer and frogs in the Andaman Islands. After a PhD and a postdoc in South Africa, Nitya is currently doing more post-doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Twitter: @NityaPM

The new study that we chatted about in this episode: Urban lizards use sleep sites that mirror the structural, thermal, and light properties of natural sites

To listen to our longer conversation from Season-1, head over to these links on Spotify / Google Podcasts!

Taniya Gill is a doctoral candidate from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Delhi. She began her journey into understanding animal personalities with the rhesus macaques of Shimla during her M.Phil, which has now led her to study the individual unique behaviours and mannerisms of this species in the forest fringes of Delhi.

She is also a talented guitarist, and is responsible for both today's stories and music!

Twitter: @taniyagill2

Instagram: @t.an.i.ya_

Journal articles:

1. Impact of individual demographic and social factors on human–wildlife interactions: a comparative study of three macaque species

2. Grooming and Aggression: A Comparative Study of Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta) and Hanuman langurs (Prebystis entellus)

3. An investigation of social interactions among rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) as a predictor of human-monkey interactions at the Jakhoo temple in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India.

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 Tanisha and I first began our foray into the realms of wildlife and conservation together several years ago, although our journeys have carried us along very different waves in the last decade. In our conversation today, we navigate those waters and reflect upon how our individual identities, sexualities, gender and caste positionings can define the specific challenges and opportunities we face in ecological fields. Tanisha co-founded Sangya Project, and is currently its Chief of Social Voice, helping people navigate the little-known world of sexual health and pleasure in a truly sensitive and inclusive manner. They speak of how they continue to draw inspiration from nature and its myriad alternate sexualities and empathy to work towards personal calm and building more compassionate human communities! If you are a queer-identifying individual in the field of ecology/conservation, do consider joining the Indian Queer Wildlifers Circle! To be a part of this group - one that respects your anonymity and keeps your identity confidential - please write in to me at thethingaboutwildlife@gmail.com or DM me on any of our socials! We are currently a group that is over 80 members strong, and we're still growing. Remember, you're not alone - we're all in this together.

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. Every story MATTERS. Visibility matters, even when kept completely confidential and anonymous.
Keeping this in mind, earlier this month, I called upon the discreet, quiet LGBTQIA+ identifying ecologists and conservationists out there, hoping to provide a safe space for them to share their stories. Today, I’m humbled to lend voice to their words - written from their lived experiences and their hearts - a mix of happy moments, anguish, optimism, pleas for the future and the desire for our professional spaces to do better by the queer community.
Today’s episode features a series of anonymous stories shared by queer-identifying wildlifers from India. While you won’t get to hear all their voices, I implore you to pay attention to their words.
I thank Ishaan and Tanisha for lending their voices to these tales, and hope you enjoy, relate to and mull over all that lies in the upcoming minutes.

Tanmay Wagh is a marine ecologist with the Dakshin Foundation who has been working in the Andaman Islands since 2013. Ever since, he’s been a part of various projects related to coral reefs, mangroves, seagrasses and dugongs, elasmobranch fisheries and leatherback turtles. At the moment, in addition to being on the outset of his PhD, he is also the Project Coordinator of the Marine Programme as part of the Long Term Ecological Observatories programme of the MOEFCC.

Twitter: @TanmayWagh5

Articles:

1. Protected areas and benthic characteristics influence the distribution of the Vulnerable bumphead parrotfish in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India

2. Observations on the female flowers and fruiting of Tape Grass from South Andaman Islands, India

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 works to establish an ecological, social and economic environment wherein the local communities can grow to sustain themselves in the years to come. Together, we explore the challenges of living and farming in a place as dynamic and unpredicatable as Uttarakhand, and explore how the agrarian communities there have been adapting to climate change over time.

Nupur Kale is a Project Associate with the Marine Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society - India. Her main research interests are sea turtle biology and conservation, and by extension all things marine. She is also interested in working with communities to ensure effective conservation and sustainable livelihoods.

Popular articles:

• The blues and greens of Lakshwadweep
• Conservation Alliances

Journal articles:

• The olive currency: a comparative account of community based ecotourism ventures in Western India
• Not in the mood for lighting: hatchling misorientation at Rushikulya, India

Shownotes:

• Dakshin Foundation
• Sunbirds, bee-eaters, leeches and sandflies
• Mass nesting (arribada) of Olive-Ridley Turtles in Orissa
• Turtle festival in Velas (Maharashtra)
• The Hawaiian Crow Is Once Again Extinct in the Wild
• Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin
• The problem of 'Colonial Science' - Asha de Vos
• Pre-conference module at the Student Conference for Conservation Science - Bangalore
• The Thing about Biogeography with Krishnapriya Tamma (Ep-02)

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 with fishermen and studying octopus behaviour, to being part of a marine exploration team to the little-known Angria Bank off the western coast of India, Avik shares several stories with us along with his lived experiences as a proud, queer wildlifer.

Today, I speak with the dedicated and observant, Dr Arijit Pal, a postdoctoral fellow at the national institute of advanced studies in bangalore. For the past decade, Arijit has been closely studying the Nicobar long-tailed macaques of Great Nicobar Island. He was one of the first primatologists to venture into this space in order to study a species we knew next to nothing about. Today he is continuing to build upon his years of work studying tool use and social dynamics in this uniquely islandic primate. In today's episode, we delve into his deep love for this space and species, and also inspect what the future looks like for them and upcoming research.

In memory of Aishwarya Mandya.

Parvathi K Prasad is a Research Affiliate at Conservation Initiatives and PhD student at Deakin University. She began her journey into this field through a human-animal interactions project in the Western Ghats with the Centre for Wildlife Studies, following which, she found her way to the dynamic ecosystems of Assam in Northeast India. After being introduced to Kaziranga and its megaherbivores, she chose to stay put and study its elephants for her PhD.

Twitter: @ParvathiKPrasad| Instagram: @e.minimus

Journal Articles:

1. Patterns of human–wildlife conflicts and compensation: Insights from Western Ghats protected areas

2. Towards a reliable assessment of Asian elephant population parameters: the application of photographic spatial capture–recapture sampling in a priority floodplain ecosystem

3. Conservation opportunities and challenges emerge from assessing nuanced stakeholder attitudes towards the Asian elephant in tea estates of Assam, Northeast India

Titir Debnath has been engaging with wildlife in many ways since she was in school, and stayed firmly on course through the years that followed. Now, after finishing her masters in environmental science and wildlife biology, she is learning as much as she can about the field of primatology by working on projects with different macaque species in India.

You can find her on Instagram at @debnathtitir where she often expresses the lighter side of wildlife through memes and reels!

Select articles in which she features:

1. Cottonians play important role in Dehing Patkai Reserve Forest
2. Rhesus Macaque of Guwahati city: Baseline Survey reveals that popular perception about the increase in its population is far from reality

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 fantastic sightings and records of these incredible animals for whom Indian waters are home. And from the sound of it, she's only getting started.

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 introspective conversation with two young individuals rooted in Ladakh, we will try to understand how local communities from the higher reaches of the Himalayas have been experiencing, and adapting to, the increasingly real consequences of climate change. Lobzang Wangtak, glacial conservationist and co-founder of Navikarana Trust, an NGO , and Dawa Dolma, an independent journalist striving to bring the people’s stories to the forefront of climate change discourse, join me to dissect what is happening in Ladakh today. 

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 reading for a university assignment several years ago, India after Gandhi, The Unquiet Woods, Makers of Modern India and Savaging the Civilized.
Dr Guha is now out with his most recent book - with poingnantly writing that you'd want to relish while hanging onto the important historical and philosophical insights it provides. It's called Speaking with Nature - a comprehensive volume that walks us through the most important personalities in India's global history of environmentalism, highlighting the immense diversity of thought, practice and environmental literacy that our country has always housed.

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!

After a little break, TTAW is back with The Thing About Reflections #2, where I'm joined by guest co-host Dr Krishna Anujan to look back upon Season 2. We spoke about the range of guests and topics we had on the podcast and dissected this season's highlights and shortcomings. We also fantasized about upcoming episodes and seasons. 

Let us know your thoughts and feedback too! Write to us at thethingaboutwildlife@gmail.com

Neeharika Gogoi is a PhD scholar with Dr. Narayan Sharma in the Department of Environmental Biology and Wildlife Sciences, Cotton University.. Her work focusses on the gorgeous capped langur found close to where she lives in Assam, where she studies how their diet varies across wild and human-occupied areas.

Select popular articles:

1. Why do we need to save Dehing Patkai?

2. Pig-tailed Macaque: Elusive Monkey of the Deep Forest

Journal Article:

1. Size matters! The largest wild stump-tailed macaque Macaca arctoides troop ever reported, located in the Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, northeastern India

Dear listener,

On this last episode of Season One, we revisit our motivation for starting The Thing About Wildlife and reflect on highlights from our guests and what we learnt from them.

We'll be back with Season Two very soon but until then, we'll keep you entertained with occasional snippets -- stay tuned!

We're also keen on hearing from you: all feedback - suggestions, compliments and criticism - is welcome! You can DM us on Twitter @PodcastTaw or Instagram @thethingaboutwildlife, or email us at thethingaboutwildlife@gmail.com

Thanks for listening!

Ishika and Akshay

Episode art for each of the 11 episodes (and our logo!) was designed by the super-talented Deepika Nandan (IG: @deepikanandan)

Shownotes:

• Why do Foresters plant trees? - Forrest D. Fleischman
• Brood parasitism among birds

Labonie Roy is a multi-media illustrator and educational content designer with a passion for nature-based learning. She has worked alongside various environment and education initiatives to bring both children and adults closer to nature through creative perspectives like upcycling, art and theatre. You can see a lot of her work featured in the educational content at Nature Classrooms, an initiative by the Nature Conservation Foundation. She's now a freelancer, and her interests lie in issues surrounding sustainability, gender and education.

Instagram: @labonie.roy

Her work for Current Conservation can be found here.

Connecting school communities in peri-urban Bengaluru to their local ecology and biodiversity

How the Myna Ate the Sun, a children's book by Labonie Roy.

~~

Deepika Nandan is an illustrator, animator, and stick-poke tattoo artist. With an interest in the environment, wildlife and traditional knowledge, she investigates the biosphere and people's detrimental impacts on it through art. Her creative practice often involves natural, sustainable and found materials that combine analogue and digital techniques. She began working with the Centre for Wildlife Studies, and now is a freelancer as well! She is also the fab artist behind the scenes of the podcast, and is responsible for making us look so good!

Instagram: @deepikanandan | @dipandpoke

Behance portfolio here.

Her work for Current Conservation can be found here.

Creature Conserve

Dr Elrika D'Souza is the Programme Manager of Oceans and Coasts at the Nature Conservation Foundation. Her research interests lie in exploring plant-animal interactions in seagrass ecosystems. Elrika has documented historical declines in dugong populations in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, and has worked towards identifying the reasons that led to that very decline. Presently, her research in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago focusses on understanding the biotic and abiotic processes that  shape seagrass ecosystems and dugong behaviour.

Nisarg Prakash is an engineer turned wildlife biologist. His primary interest is to conserve otters and their habitats. His work spans studying otters, or working with fishermen to understand the river better, and also their relationship with these animals. Nisarg works across several riverine systems, particularly the Kaveri river in Karnataka. He believes life along a river is infinitely more rewarding than life in the city!

Twitter: @ocap_mycap 

Popular Writing:

• Living Waters: The Resistance and Resilience of the Cauvery 
• The Otter River – Kaveri 
• Solastalgia Along the Sharavathy: A Quest for Peace in a Conversation With a River 
• No Sense Of Place: To Learn the Meaning of Life From a Four-Legged Therapist 
• The Dog Who Knew Sadness  
• How to Be an Otter
  

Journal Articles:

• Conservation of the Asian Small-Clawed Otter (Aonyx Cinereus) in Human-Modified Landscapes, Western Ghats, India 
• First Record of Eurasian Otter Lutra lutra in the Anamalai Hills, Southern Western Ghats, India
  

Shownotes:

• MSc Wildlife Program Gains New Partners 
• Do trees make rivers flow? 

I am joined by my guest co-host, Tanmay Wagh, who you all met last Season as part of episode 21: The Thing About Marine Adventures! Together, we speak to two fabulous members of the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team at the Dakshin Foundation - James Tirkey and Babu Kutty.
James is the Base Coordinator and a Field Assistant at ANET. He has extensive research experience - having assisted on several forestry projects. He enjoys work within the realms of botany, herpetology, birding, mangroves systems and the marine sphere. He has a scientific and logical mind, with a largely calm demeanor, save for the occasional volleyball match! He's also a keen naturalist, and seeing an unexpected species around the field base is one sure-shot way to bring an uncharacteristic, joyous smile on his face.
Babu is the Boat Captain of the research vessel Khlee, and is also the maintenance-in-charge at ANET. Basically, the king of jugaad and quick-fixes! He is also a certified diver with skilled knowledge in navigating the seascape - both above and under water. He is integral to the planning and execution of several research projects - including Tanmay's - and is one of the most passionate members of ANET. He expresses his concern for the environment through heated discussions and long rants, all lending insight into his deeply pragmatic thinking.

Happy 2023, listeners! This year, The Thing About Wildlife is kick-starting with a 10-part series on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Stay tuned for more!

We're back today with another in our Andaman and Nicobar series, with a conversation featuring Professor Pankaj Sekhsaria. His main areas of research lie at the intersection of environment, science and society and he is incredibly driven when it comes to issues of the environment and wildlife conservation across the country. He is also an incredible and prolific writer and storyteller, and you can find his words tucked away in mainstream journalism, academic articles, novels, essays and more.

Today, he joins me to talk about where his deep connection with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands comes from, and we dissect all that is currently unfolding in terms of infrastructural development on Great Nicobar Island. What does it mean for the future of the island's people and biodiversity?

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 a fantastic nature educator and is now the co-founder of an exciting initiative: Spiders and the Sea. In addition to his photography and teaching, he's also a prolific writer, with his words appearing frequently in places like Roundglass Sustain where he's written over 50 articles!

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 Department of Anthropology at the University of Delhi, and works closely with urban rhesus macaques of Delhi, where she studies their myriad personalities.
Next, we have Ishaan Patil from episode 18: The Thing About Getting Started. Ishaan is a multi-talented, multi-faceted individual who has already forayed into several avenues of the conservation space: from environmental education and better understanding hornbills to social sciences and social justice at the James Hutton Institute.
And then, from Season-2 Episode 19: The Thing About Landscape Avifauna, we were joined by Jobin Varughese. Landscape architect turned birder and ecologist, he is nearly Dr Jobin at the moment - having completed his doctoral work since we last spoke at IISER Thirupathi.
Together, we spoke at length about our collective queer experiences and how they link into our careers! If you haven't heard the episodes I just mentioned yet, do give them a listen after this one! The work that Taniya, Ishaan and Jobin do is truly fantastic, interdisciplinary and inspiring! If you are a queer-identifying individual in the field of ecology/conservation, do consider joining the Indian Queer Wildlifers Circle! To be a part of this group - one that respects your anonymity and keeps your identity confidential - please write in to me at thethingaboutwildlife.com or DM me on any of our socials! We are currently a group that is over 80 members strong, and we're still growing. Remember, you're not alone - we're all in this together.

Welcome to Season-2 and an all-new segment on the podcast: The Thing About Wildlife - In a Nutshell. Here, I talk to researchers, students, educators, artists, field assistants and wildlife enthusiasts who bring you stories from their time in nature. Episode 1 will be up next week! 

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 ecological facts, folklore, adventure and magic. Her books include some exciting titles like The Myth of the Wild Gaur and The Guardians of the Forest - and she already has a couple more in the pipeline!

Dr. Narayan Sharma studies community and behavioural ecology, and the conservation biology of the primates in the fragmented landscape of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley of northeastern India. He is also interested in political, human and landscape ecology, and ecological history. More recently, he has also been deeply involved in teaching environmental biology and wildlife sciences at Cotton College, Guwahati, where he is an Assistant Professor.

Twitter: @assamensis7 

Popular Writing:

• Spotting a Mighty Troop of Stump-tailed Macaques 
• The singing farmers of the forest  
• Pig-tailed Macaque: Elusive Monkey of the Deep Forest  

Journal Articles:

• Size matters! The largest wild stump-tailed macaque Macaca arctoides troop ever reported, located in the Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, northeastern India 
• Chronic extraction of forest resources is threatening a unique wildlife habitat of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley, northeastern India  
• Socio-economic Drivers of Forest Cover Change in Assam: A Historical Perspective  

Show notes:

• Department of Environment Biology and Wildlife Science, Cotton University, Guwahati 
• An interview with Nicholas J. Gotelli 
• After Assam oilfield fire, a central agency sought a review of environmental clearances to Oil India 

Munib Khanyari has just emerged from having completed his fascinating doctoral work in the Himalayas. He did his PhD from the University of Bristol/University of Oxford, and has been associated with the High Altitudes Program at the Nature Conservation Foundation as a Research Scholar for quite some time. His work focuses on the ungulates of the mountains – how they survive, how they interact with livestock, and even their health in the up-high cold deserts. He is also a conservation optimist!

Instagram: @munibkhanyari | Twitter: @KhanyariMunib

Munib is a prolific academic! You can find and download all his research publications here.

To know more about Conservation Optimism, check out this link.

To follow the Conservation Optimism India page, follow them @conservationoptimismindia

Jobin Varughese is an ecologist with a masters in ecology from Pondicherry University. His initial training as an architect, and later as a landscape architect, now contributes in interesting ways to his work on animal behaviour and movement. With an increasing interest in the natural sciences, and growing experience within the field, Jobin entirely shifted gears towards ecology in 2015, and is now studying the bird communities of the wonderful Shola sky islands for his PhD at IISER Thirupathi with Dr. V V Robin.

Instagram, featuring his fabulous illustrations: @varughesejobin | Twitter: @jobinvarughese

Articles:

1. Oriental Pied Hornbill preying upon a Black-crested Bulbul nestling

2. Slow conservation in the Nilgiris field learning center: an integrative model of education, research, and practice

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 and narratives of these attacks in Himachal Pradesh. She is now a Programme Manager with the High Altitudes Programme at the Nature Conservation Foundation to continue doing such meaningful work! Our conversation meandered through empathy, loss, nostalgia and laughter.

Tejaswini Nagesh is a product designer who works with the World Wide Fund for Nature - India in Tezpur. Her current work focuses on understanding the factors that contribute to elephant collisions with trains in Assam, so as to minimize them as far as possible. She is on a mission to explore how she can bring her unique skill set to this field of wildlife conservation through creative collaborations and her focused problem-solving mindset. After doing her Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and her Masters in Product Design from the National Institute of Design, she found her way, rather serendipitously towards creating solutions for conservation problems.

Instagram: @tejaswininagesh

The Jumbo Problem

You can find her Behance profile here.

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 driving them. He has profiled the fisheries of these Islands, with a focus on the grouper fisheries. His research spans avenues of marine biology, community-based research and conservation, and global economics.

Ishaan Patil is an early career scientist who is not sure what to call himself yet: anthropologist, environmental scientist or social scientist? He studied Life Science at St. Xaviers’ College, Autonomous, Mumbai, and then took a year off to intern close to home at the Centre for Wildlife Studies and the Nature Conservation Foundation. Next, he did his Masters in Environmental Anthropology at the University of Kent, and now works as a research assistant at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland. He is multi-talented, with interests both personal and professional ranging from art and video making to social media and social justice.

Social Media:

Instagram: @ishaanpatil | Twitter: @Ish2an

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 queer, female-identifying individual, and about some larger philosophical questions about what fieldwork ought to look like. Article mentioned in the episode: https://lonelyconservationists.com/2023/02/08/nisha/

If you are a queer-identifying individual in the field of ecology/conservation, do consider joining the Indian Queer Wildlifers Circle! To be a part of this group - one that respects your anonymity and keeps your identity confidential - please write in to me at thethingaboutwildlife.com or DM me on any of our socials! We are currently a group that is over 80 members strong, and we're still growing. Remember, you're not alone - we're all in this together.

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 institutions, cultures and histories. ~ We want to take a moment to shout out to Feedspot! They are a platform that discovers, categorizes, and ranks podcasts across a wide range of niche categories and geographies, and we were thrilled to be ranked third among India's Top Science Podcasts! Thank you so much, Feedspot, and every listener who has tuned in, it is truly an honour.

https://podcasts.feedspot.com/india_science_podcasts/

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 drivers behind the fisheries. With about a decade of interdisciplinary and diverse experiences under her belt, she is now co-leading the Sharks and Rays project in the Marine Conservation Programme at the Wildlife Conservation Society!