T R Shankar Raman
Scientist, Nature Conservation Foundation
Dr T R Shankar Raman likes to imagine himself as a writer turned wildlife scientist turned writer, living in a landscape of rainforests and plantations in the Anamalai hills of southern India. As a wildlife scientist, he focuses on the ecology and conservation of tropical forests and wildlife—especially rainforest plants, birds, and mammals—mainly in the Western Ghats. He writes creative nonfiction and essays on nature and conservation for newspapers, magazines, and blogs, besides occasional book reviews and op-ed or feature articles. His book The Wild Heart of India: Nature and Conservation in the City, the Country, and the Wild was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press, India. In 2018, he co-authored Pillars of Life: Magnificent Trees of the Western Ghats with Divya Mudappa (Illustrations by Nirupa Rao and Sartaj Ghuman). As a participant in an open initiative called WikiProject Nature and Conservation in India, he has also been contributing media (his images, video and audio recordings) to Wikimedia Commons and editing Wikipedia pages related to nature and conservation in India. Here is his Wikipedia user page, and you can find his Wikimedia Commons photo gallery here (works in progress). He also likes to read a fair bit and you can see what he is reading here.