India has some of the world's most biodiverse regions. The political boundaries of India encompass a wide range of biomes–desert, high mountains, highlands, tropical and temperate forests, swamplands, plains, grasslands, areas surrounding rivers, as well as island archipelago. It hosts 4 biodiversity hotspots: the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Indo-Burma region and the Sundaland. These hotspots have numerous endemic species.
K. Ullas Karanth is a conservation zoologist and a leading tiger expert based in Karnataka, India. He was the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's India Programme. He is notable for pioneering the scientific use of camera traps in population density studies of large wild mammals in India. He was a Senior Conservation Scientist with the New York based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Technical Director of the WCS Tiger Conservation Program.
Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary is a protected area and tiger reserve as part of the Project Tiger, situated in Chikkamagaluru district, 23 km (14 mi) south of Bhadravathi city, 38 km (24 mi) 20 km from Tarikere town, northwest of Chikkamagaluru and 283 km from Bengaluru city in Karnataka state, India. Bhadra sanctuary has a wide range of flora and fauna and is a popular place for day outings. The 1,875 m (6,152 ft) above MSL Hebbe Giri is the highest peak in the sanctuary.
The Nature Conservation Foundation is a non-governmental wildlife conservation and research organisation based in Mysore, India. They promote the use of science for wildlife conservation in India.
Mysore Doreswamy Madhusudan, Ph. D., is an Indian wildlife biologist and ecologist. He is the Co-founder and Director of Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. He has worked on understanding and mitigating the effects of human-wildlife conflict in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in South India. He has also worked in several other forests in the Himalayas and North-east India. In 2004, he was one among the team of wildlife biologists who described Arunachal macaque, a new species of macaque from Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Bittu Sahgal is an environmental activist, writer, and the founder of Sanctuary Nature Foundation, an Indian nonprofit conservation organization that works on environmental policy, advocacy, science, on-ground support and habitat management. He is also the founding editor of Sanctuary Asia, a wildlife and ecology magazine.
Sandesh Kadur is an Indian wildlife film producer and conservation photographer known for his contributions to Planet Earth II. Sandesh's films have been shown on television networks including National Geographic Channel, BBC, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
Priya Davidar is an Indian scientific researcher, a conservation biologist, scholar and an author. Currently she is working as a professor at the Pondicherry University and conducts ecological research in different regions of India. She has authored a few books, including Whispers from the Wild, co-authored with E.R.C Davidar and published by Penguin India books. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012. She is actively involved with the conservation of forests and wildlife. She has published about 100 papers in scientific journals.
Naresh Bedi is an Indian filmmaker, the eldest of the Bedi Brothers and a member of the second generation of three generations of Wildlife photographers and filmmakers. He is the first Asian to receive a Wildscreen Panda Award and the first Indian to receive a nomination for the British Academy Film Awards. He was honoured by the Government of India in 2015 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award.
Vartika Brij Nath Singh is an Indian model and beauty pageant titleholder who was appointed as Miss Universe India 2019 and represented India at 68th edition of the Miss Universe pageant. She was previously crowned as Miss Grand India in 2015. The GQ magazine had ranked her among the hottest women of India in 2017.
Kalyan Varma is a Bangalore based Natural history filmmaker, photographer and conservationist. He is one of the founders of Peepli Project; co-director of Nature InFocus nature and wildlife festival; founding member of India Nature Watch. He currently freelances with the BBC Natural History, Netflix, Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel (India), and also works with grassroots NGOs like Nature Conservation Foundation to highlight environmental issues in India. He is a recipient of the Carl Zeiss Wildlife Conservation Award.
Rathika Ramasamy is an Indian wildlife photographer. She is based in Chennai and operates as a freelance photographer. She has received many accolades for her photographs and has been called the "first Indian woman to strike an international reputation as a wildlife photographer".
Nature inFocus is in the space of curation and dissemination of information about India's wild spaces. It aims to do this by using photography as a tool to make these conversations accessible to everyone. This portal carries articles about wildlife, conservation, eco-travel, communities, nature art, field notes, photography tips, research etc.
Uma Ramakrishnan is an Indian molecular ecologist and professor at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore. Her research investigates population genetics and evolutionary history of mammals in the Indian subcontinent, including work to save India’s tigers. In July 2019, she was elected as a fellow to the Indian National Science Academy.
Nidhi Sunil is a South Indian model, actress, and activist. Nidhi was born in Kerala and is known for her role as Samira in the Indian drama film Kaash. Nidhi is a previous recipient of Vogue India's Model of the year award, and is currently one of L’Oréal's global ambassadors.
The Women of Discovery Awards are given by the non-profit WINGS WorldQuest, in recognition of the achievements of women in science and exploration. The awards were first presented in 2003, the same year that WINGS WorldQuest was formed by Milbry Polk and Leila Hadley Luce. Both the Board of Directors and a Junior Council at the granting organization, WINGS WorldQuest, are involved in selecting the recipients of the Women of Discovery Awards, who are thereafter known as Fellows.
The WINGS Women of Discovery Awards and Fellows Program were established to celebrate the ground-breaking work of women explorers and scientists who are actively out in the field today and provide critical, unrestricted funding to support and ensure continued study.
Latika Nath is an Indian author, photographer and wildlife conservationist. Featuring her work, in 2001, she was awarded the title of 'The Tiger Princess' by National Geographic which featured her in a one-hour documentary film. She has worked since 1990 for the conservation of tigers in India. In May 2020, she was bestowed with the honorary title of "Her Daringness" by Mr Nitin Gupta in a cover story based on Latika's life and work, and featuring her work on wildlife conservation.
Aparajita Datta is an Indian wildlife ecologist who works for the Nature Conservation Foundation. Her research in the dense tropical forests of Arunachal Pradesh has successfully focused on hornbills, saving them from poachers. In 2013, she was one of eight conservationists to receive the Whitley Award.
Yadvendradev Vikramsinh Jhala, popularly addressed by his family name Jhala, is an Indian scientist and conservationist. He is the current dean and a senior professor at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. Over the past three decades, he has studied animals in tropical forest and arid ecosystems and trained a multitude of wildlife professionals across the world.
Sangita Iyer is an Indian-Canadian broadcast journalist, writer, biologist and documentary filmmaker. She is known for her advocacy on wildlife conservation, especially for wild elephants, and for exposing the atrocities against Asian elephants by religious institutions. Iyer has been featured in the BBC News. She is the founding executive director and president of the Voice for Asian Elephants Society, which was created in 2016 with the aim of protecting wild and captive elephants of India.
