Dear First name / friend,

 

April proved to be a month of significant milestones at CWS. This month brought distinguished recognition for Dr. Krithi K. Karanth, CEO of the Centre for Wildlife Studies, who was awarded the 2026 Esmond B. Martin Royal Geographical Society Prize in London, a moment we celebrated. We welcomed Dr. Rohit Chakravarty to our team as Principal Scientist and Faculty, who will lead and launch our exciting new bat program. This month, we also celebrate several internal promotions, new joinees to CWS.

 

In this edition of Into the Wild, we share four new publications from the CWS team, complemented by our latest Wild Science blogs that bring these findings to life in accessible, engaging summaries. Read on for a look at our work and the people driving science and conservation forward!

On 13th April, Dr. Krithi K. Karanth was awarded the 2026 Esmond B. Martin Royal Geographical Society Prize in London, becoming the first Asian recipient of this prestigious honour. She shares the 2026 Prize with Professor Alexandre Antonelli, Executive Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As part of this recognition, Dr. Karanth delivered the Royal Geographical Society’s Monday Night Lecture, bringing together almost three decades of work, stories from the field, and the journey of turning science into conservation programs that support millions of people living alongside wildlife in India. If you’d like to watch the full lecture, please visit the link here.

We are excited to share the Centre for Wildlife Studies' 2025–2026 Annual Report. This last year, has been a year worth celebrating! CWS and Dr. Karanth were honored with the John P. McNulty Prize, becoming the first wildlife conservation organisation to receive this recognition. Wild Seve marked a decade of service. Wild Shaale had its biggest year yet, reaching over 500 schools. Wild Surakshe conducted workshops with over 100 veterinary departments and colleges, agricultural departments, gram panchayats, healthcare workers, and forest department staff. We crossed one million trees planted through Wild Carbon. This last year we saw Dr. Sikha Hariharan and Dr. Simran Prasad graduate from our doctoral program. Our Elephant Program extend its footprint from the Western Ghats into the Eastern Ghats. Our team also published a record number of scientific papers in a single year at CWS! But beyond the numbers, this report is a reflection of something more meaningful, over four decades of science in service of wildlife and people, and the partners who make it all possible. None of this work happens without you. Your belief in CWS is what allows us to show up, year after year, for India's wildlife and the people who live alongside it. Please read the full report here and celebrate this journey with us.

We are excited to share our latest study published in Frontiers in Science on 9th April 2026 titled “Nature Positive: halting and reversing biodiversity loss toward restoring Earth system stability.” Led by Dr. Harvey Locke and co authored by Dr. Johan Rockström, Dr. Raina K. Plowright, Dr. Dan Laffoley, Dr. Leroy Little Bear, Dr. Carlos A. Peres, Dr. Fuwen Wei, Dr. Krithi K. Karanth, Dr. Lydia Zemke, Robyn Seetal and Dr. F. Richard Hauer, this paper asks a critical question: is a livable future possible without rethinking the relationship between nature and economic growth? The paper argues for an urgent shift towards a 'Nature Positive' approach, prioritizing the protection of intact ecosystems before they are lost, while tailoring strategies for shared and heavily altered landscapes. To read the paper, visit the link here.

 

Tree planting is widely promoted as a nature-based solution to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and rural livelihoods. Yet, many programs fall short because they fail to align with the needs and preferences of the very people who plant and manage these trees. A new paper published in Ecological Economics on 4th April 2026, led by Dr. Danny Tobin and co-authored by Dr. Krithi K. Karanth, alongside a global team of scientists and researchers, asks a critical question: how can tree-planting programs better balance environmental goals with the economic realities faced by farmers? Titled ‘Guiding private afforestation to raise public goods provision: Understanding farmers' multi-dimensional preferences for trees in India’, this paper draws on research with smallholder farmers in Karnataka. The study shows that while interest in tree planting is high, farmers tend to prefer options that maximise private benefits. In contrast, biodiversity-rich planting designs, though more beneficial for ecosystems, often require targeted incentives to encourage adoption. The findings point toward a more effective path forward: flexible, farmer-centered program design. To read the full paper, visit the link here.

 

We are excited to share our new paper published in Oryx — The International Journal of Conservation on 23rd April 2026. Authored by Imran Siddiqui, Nilanjan Basu, Dr. Kathan Bandyopadhyay, Dr. John Koprowski & Dr. Venkatesh Angandhula; the study titled 'Could prey support the recovery of a tiger population? Long-term prey density and carrying capacity assessment of a tiger reserve in India' focuses on Kawal Tiger Reserve, Telangana. It finds that the reserve has enough prey to support 35+ tigers, but restoring tigers will require stronger corridor connectivity, assisted dispersal of females, and community engagement. To read the paper, click here.

 

Not all honey bees are the same! Our latest publication, authored by Dr. Sruthi Unnikrishnan, Deepika Bais, Ashwin Suryanarayanan, Dr. Aridni Shah & Dr. Axel Brockmann, finds that tropical Asian honey bees follow some familiar biological rules, but also show surprising differences in how their workers grow up and divide labour. Titled 'Variation in behavioural maturation in tropical honey bees corresponds with hormonal and molecular differences', this study was published in Journal of Experimental Biology on 23rd April 2026. Scientists compared two tropical Asian honey bee species, Apis florea and Apis cerana, and found that while the two species share key hormonal and molecular mechanisms with the European honey bee, they differ markedly in the pace at which their workers transition from nest duties to foraging. To read the paper, click here. 

 

Introducing Dr. Rohit Chakravarty, who joins us at CWS as Principal Scientist and Faculty. Over the past 10 years, Rohit has studied bats across diverse landscapes in India. He holds a master's in Wildlife Biology & Conservation from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and a doctoral degree from Leibniz Institute for Zoo & Wildlife Research, Germany. Prior to joining CWS, Rohit worked with Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) and Bat Conservation International (BCI) where he led projects on understanding the effects of urbanization and wind energy on bats, exploring the conflict between bats and archaeological site managers, and preparing a research and conservation roadmap for Indian bats. 

 

We are also excited to welcome Dr. Madhushri Mudke to CWS as a Post Doctoral Fellow. Madhushri is a conservation scientist with a PhD in Conservation Science and Sustainability Studies, working at the intersection of amphibian ecology, urbanization, and spatial modelling. Her research combines field ecology with interdisciplinary approaches to better understand how biodiversity responds to human-driven environmental change and to inform more biodiversity-sensitive development. Her work on the endemic dancing frogs of the Western Ghats has been supported by the ZSL-EDGE Fellowship and the Rufford Foundation (UK). 

We are thrilled to share a paper led by Dr. Gabby Salazar, and co-authored by Nitya Satheesh, Ishika Ramakrishna, Dr. Martha C. Monroe, Dr. Morena Mills, and Dr. Krithi K. Karanth, published in Conservation Science and Practice, has been recognized among Wiley’s top 10 most-cited papers among work published in 2024. Titled "Using environmental education to nurture positive human–wildlife interactions in India", the study examines the role of early environmental education to reduce negative human-wildlife interactions, and promote safety and mitigation. To read the paper, visit the link here.

We are excited to announce the promotions of Dr. Sruthi Unnikrishnan (Doctoral Program & Research) to Teaching Faculty and Doctoral Program Manager, Shruti Ghosh (Media & Outreach) to Program Manager. A huge congratulations to Anaswara Pradeep (Wild Surakshe), Ronil Gosavi (Wild Seve), Shal Sabeel (Wild Seve) and Ananthkumar C (Wild Seve) on their promotions. We look forward to seeing all of them grow and innovate in their new positions.

 

Our CEO, Dr. Krithi K. Karanth, was invited to be a panelist at the Skoll Forum at Rhodes House in Oxford between 20th-24th April 2026. She joined a powerful panel hosted by the McNulty Foundation and Aspen Institute titled 'This Isn't Easy: Braving Uncertainty' alongside 2025 McNulty Prize co-laureates Layla Zaidane (Future Caucus) and Mohamed Ali Diini (Iftin Global), moderated by Stace Lindsay, EVP for Leadership at Aspen Institute. To know more about CWS and the McNulty Prize, visit the link here.

 

 

“My experiences in the field were filled with rich, vibrant stories of people and elephants. One such experience was with a farmer in Kerala. He had lived beside the forest long enough to remember when a small firecracker would send an elephant away from the field. Those days are gone. Now, he says, you can try your best to move an elephant away, and it will simply stand there, unmoving. He has watched the conflict deepen over three decades — the cement factory razing down elephant habitats, herds fragmenting, and smaller groups drifting down from the mountains toward banana groves and paddy fields. He knows that their pursuit of food leads them to various places within the landscape, oftentimes resulting in movement within his farm. He eventually left that farm because of the elephants.  

 

The moment that changed his perception was when he heard about a train collision five kilometers from his home. He was unwell at the time, but he made the journey anyway, limping to the site. What he found was a large elephant that had been hit in the collision. When asked how he felt seeing it, he pauses only briefly. My eyes watered. The elephant, he explains, is Mahalakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. Despite him facing damages to his crops, and leaving his farm because of elephants frequenting the area, he explained that it did not take away from the reverence he had for the animal. His words stayed with me long after the interview ended, a reminder that human–elephant relationships are rarely simple. They are shaped by loss, reverence, memory, and belief, often all at once. His perspective reminded me that these relationships cannot be reduced to conflict alone. They are incredibly layered, more than any single narrative allows.”

 

- Dr. Simran Prasad, Post-Doctoral Fellow

Valarmathi, a 55-year-old resident of Mevani, has been working as an MNREGA labourer for over a decade. During a Wild Surakshe session at Mevani Gram Panchaya in Tamil Nadu, she shared a deeply distressing incident from her past, one that continues to shape her perspective on community awareness and public health. Nearly two decades ago, during a local temple festival in the evening, a stray dog attacked Valarmathi’s three-year-old daughter. The child sustained severe bite injuries to her neck and hands. She was taken to a nearby hospital and later referred to another facility for further treatment. Despite receiving anti-rabies vaccination and medical care, her daughter developed rabies and tragically passed away within two days.

 

Recounting this tragedy, Valarmathi emphasized how a lack of timely awareness and preparedness in rural communities can have irreversible consequences. She expressed that programs like Wild Surakshe play a critical role in educating people about prevention, immediate response, and the importance of seeking proper medical care. Her story stands as a powerful reminder of why sustained awareness efforts are essential, particularly in vulnerable rural settings. To know more about Wild Surakshe, click here.

54% of ecosystems are already degraded, and we are running out of time. A Nature Positive future means reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 and restoring ecosystems by 2050. It demands bold action: rethinking economies, scaling investment, and protecting what remains—because nature isn’t optional, it’s the foundation of life. To learn more, read our blog here.

Farmers are key to successful tree-planting, but their choices matter! A recent study co-authored by Dr. Krithi K. Karanth shows that when farmers are given flexibility and support in terms of incentives, tree-planting can benefit livelihoods, biodiversity, and climate together. It proposes a simple idea: listen to farmers, and grow forests that last. To learn more, read our blog here.

As the new financial year begins, we are proud to reflect on how far we have come driven by the dedication of our team and the continued support of those who believe in our mission. We celebrate not just our collective growth as an organisation, but the individual strides of every staff member who makes this work possible. We look forward to watching our new promotees flourish in their roles, and to the fresh perspectives our newest team members will bring. Thank you for standing with us on this journey, we look forward to sharing even more good news with you in the months ahead.

 

Warm Regards,

Dr. Krithi K. Karanth

Chief Executive Officer

Centre for Wildlife Studies