Latika Nath is India's first female wildlife biologist and the first Indian woman with a doctorate on tigers. She was raised in Kashmir and has an undergraduate degree in Environment Science from Maitreyi College in Delhi University. She had also obtained a scholarship opportunity from the School of Forestry at the University of Wales. She completed her doctoral research and received her PhD on tigers from the University of Oxford under the guidance of renowned biologist David Macdonald. She began her career at INTACH where she dealt with the issue of river pollution in the Marwar region of Rajasthan.

Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Achanakmar National Parks have implemented atleast 75% of her ideas and as a result, have resolved most of their human-wildlife conflict and landscape ecology issues. In September 2003, Latika wrote a book for children, Takdir, the tiger cub - which encompassed wildlife in general, and was published by Tullika Books, Chennai, in 28 languages internationally. In 2005, Latika founded the Wild India Resorts (Kanha) Pvt Ltd and in 2008, she founded the Singinawa Foundation which was responsible for the upliftment of the indigenous tribal communities that inhabited the tiger reserve in Kanha.

She helped in raising funds for imparting computer education to the tribal children in the Kanha Tiger Reserve. She was christened ‘India’s Tiger Princess’ when the National Geographic Channel was launched in India and was also the ambassador for Aircel’s Save The Tiger television campaign. Latika Nath proved herself to be a hardworking and serious conservation ecologist and thereby the animal conservation scenario in India has had a total makeover through her considerable efforts.

Blog By Chithra Prabhakaran