Manisha Kairaly (Molly)
Manisha Kairaly (Molly) has over a decade of experience in promoting organic farming, traditional food systems, rural entrepreneurship, awareness building and community engagement, sustainability and conservation at the grassroots. Her expertise lies in the sphere of agrobiodiversity, regenerative practices and sustainable design. Her research areas are the innumerable interconnections between food, craft and ecology. She is alumni of the ALGOA Leadership Course in Organic Agriculture as well as IFOAM Asia’s Training of Trainers.
Siddharth Rao
Siddharth Rao is a conservation biologist and development practitioner. Siddharth holds a master’s degree in Ecology and has over twenty years of experience working in various capacities spanning conservation practice, wildlife research and media. His work focuses on restoration ecology, community led conservation, environmental justice, carnivore ecology, herpetology, markets for conservation and conservation outreach and education. Siddharth is a 2015 Kinship Conservation Fellow.
siddharth@adavi.org
Sreekar Rachakonda
As a tropical ecologist Sreekar is interested in matrix management and habitat creation - and ultimately in questions such as where and how we maintain biodiversity in production landscapes, and the effects of biodiversity in the provision of ecosystem services. He uses field experiments and analytical methods to understand habitat use, movement ecology and ecosystem services of the study subjects. Most of his work uses birds, and herptiles as a model system.
Shonali Chenzira
Shonali Chenzira is a writer who is interested in understanding and bettering the dynamic relationships between wildlife, ecology, people and development. She is a Content Specialist of various mediums using creative strategy, community engagement, capacity building and conservation education as a means to this end. She has led the Design and Development of national programmes concerning critical issues affecting rural India such as snakebite mitigation. Shonali imagines and works at cultivating a reality that is inclusive, wild, bio diverse and sustainable.
GIRIJA ANGAJALA
Girija has been actively involved in caring for domestic and wild animals for over a decade now. She has reared and cared for cattle, goat and sheep, chicken, dogs and cats since her childhood. Over the years she has also been involved in rescue and rehabilitation of injured wild animals such as peacocks, parrots, babblers, squirrels, civets and monitor lizards. Girija is currently engaged with the caretaking and welfare of domestic animals in the Timbaktu campus and the Eethavanam field station. Her areas of interest and study are human and wildlife interactions, ethno botany, rescue and rehabilitation, restoration ecology and nature education – especially for children. She also works on raising awareness among rural communities about co- existing with wildlife and is keen to explore snakebite conflict mitigation. Girija works full time at Timbaktu and volunteers with animal rescue and rehabitlitation.
Gautham Ramachandra
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A conservation biologist by training, Gautham is a restoration ecologist based in the Netherlands. He has been involved with several projects in India, ranging from behavioral ethology of King Cobras to the management of invasive species – Lantana, in the Bandipura tiger reserve. His current interests lie in exploring the application of UAV platforms to landscape restoration at scale. He has since worked on restoration projects in several geographies, including the Americas, Africa, Australia and Europe. Gautham has a master’s degree in Nature conservation from Wageningen university.
Joseph Vattakaven
Joseph Vattakaven has over 20 years’ experience in the field of Wildlife Research and Conservation. His field research involved intensive tracking of 10 radio-collared tigers using elephants to study their predation ecology, behaviour and ranging patterns in Kanha tiger reserve, Central India for over 5 years in a PhD level research project with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). He followed this with 10 years at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as Tiger Lead for the National Tiger programme in seven landscapes in India and thereafter as Tiger Conservation Advisor and Tiger Recovery and Landscape Lead with WWF’s Global Tiger Programme across 13 Tiger Range countries (Russia-China, South Asia & SE Asia) on research and recovery of Tiger populations. Joseph’s other interests include Wolves (having tracked radio-collared Indian Wolves for his master’s thesis with WII in Western India) Butterflies (has worked with ATREE on India’s first Butterfly Park), Bees and Mysticism.