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, primarily working on every aspect of their flagship Wild Shaale conservation education program. She is now the Head of Engagement at the Echo Network that brings nuanced science to a vast range of audiences and collaborators to tackle real-world problems in human and environmental spaces. Nitya has been a mentor, a friend, a colleague and confidante ever since I started my first proper job in this field, and this episode was my selfish way to reconnecting with a beautiful soul who I've dearly missed - I hope you learn from her as I have in all these 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 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.

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!

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/

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.

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!

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. 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.