Event Details

This seminar will discuss how scientific interventions and monitoring, coupled with India’s socio-political, religious, and legal commitments to life have bolstered the revival and conservation of endangered species while managing direct odds with a human population of 1.4  billion.

Professor YV  Jhala, is the Dean of the Wildlife Institute of India. He has researched endangered carnivores, ungulates, and birds in India for the past 30 years. These include Indian wolves, tigers, Asiatic lions, snow leopards, striped hyenas, golden jackal, Indian fox, blackbuck, Great Indian Bustard and greater one horned rhinoceros. He teaches graduate courses on conservation biology and population ecology. Jhala received his PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA in 1991 and worked with the Smithsonian Institution till 1993 after which he joined the Wildlife Institute of India as a faculty. Jhala’s research and country scale monitoring of tiger populations for the past 15 years have resulted in major policy and changes in wildlife management practices in India, and has received the Guinness World Records accolade of being the largest terrestrial wildlife survey on the planet. He is currently leading an ambitious project of bringing the cheetah back in India.

This joint Biology/Environmental Studies seminar is hosted by Stotra Chakrabarti.