K ullas karanth
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Dr. K. Ullas Karanth, a conservation zoologist, is a leading tiger expert based in India. He is the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society India Program. Dr. Karanth directs the WCS effort to help save the tiger, and has conducted country-wide surveys to better estimate their population and habitat needs. He is also a Senior Conservation Scientist with the New York based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Technical Director of the WCS Tiger Conservation Program.
Using peer reviewed scientific methodologies, Dr.Karanth has demonstrated the importance of maintaining the prey base in a given habitat to ensure the survival of charismatic carnivore species such as the tiger.
Early life
Dr. Karanth is the son of noted Kannada writer, Dr. Shivaram Karanth. In his adolescence, Dr. Karanth read about naturalists trying to save tigers in Asia. While he resolved to join the effort, he studied engineering. He then tried his hand at farming for some years.[1] His amateur biological observations of the flora and fauna of his native Karnataka State in Southern India, under severe pressure from incompatible human activity, spurred him to investigate conservation models for the Western Ghats, which represent a global biodiversity hotspot. A 1983 meeting with a Smithsonian delegation paved the way for his travel to the USA. He studied in the US National Zoo's Wildlife Conservation and Management Training Program in 1987, obtained his Master's degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Florida in 1988, and a Doctorate in Applied Zoology from Mangalore University in 1993.
Dr. Karanth and tiger populations in India
His longest single project is arguably the monitoring of the health of forests and biodiversity in the Nagarahole Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park in Karnataka. Some results arising out of the study, on the status of tigers and their prey in particular, have been published as scientific papers and books.
The scientific technique that forms the foundation of scientific estimation of tiger densities in forests is capture-recapture sampling. By applying a robust statistical model to the sampling data, a fairly accurate estimate of tigers in a given area can be arrived at. This is distinctly different from the pugmark method adopted so far by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and its specially constituted unit, Project Tiger, in India. It is also different in its approach in that it does not claim to produce a total count of tigers in a given area and is more indicative of population levels. [2]
This approach to tiger conservation relies on conservation of forests from both a prey and predator perspective. Dr.Karanth suggests that with such approaches, it is possible to preserve tigers in India and elsewhere.
Other work
Dr. Karanth is a scientific fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and is on the editorial board of the journals Oryx and Journal of Applied Ecology. He also serves on the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s specialist groups on Cats, Elephants, Wild Cattle and Small Carnivores. He is the Scientific Advisor to Wildlife First, a pro-active wildlife advocacy group and is prime mover in a WCS-funded multi-institutional initiative running a graduate program in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences at Bangalore.
Bibliography
- Photographic sampling of elusive mammals in tropical forests (K U Karanth, J D Nichols, N S Kumar) 2004
- Phylogeography and genetic ancestry of tigers (K U Karanth et al in Public Library of Science Biology Journal) 2004
- Estimation of tiger densities in the tropical dry forests of Panna, Central India, using photographic capture-recapture sampling (K U Karanth, Raghunandan, S Chundawat, J D Nichols, N S Kumar in Animal Conservation) 2004
- Tigers and thier prey: Predicting carnivore densities from prey abundance (K U Karanth, J D Nichols, N S Kumar, W A Link, J E Hines in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA) 2004
- Human-carnivore conflict and perspectives on carnivore management worldwide (A Treves and K U Karanth in Conservation Biology) 2003
- Human-carnivore conflict: local solutions with global applications (A Treves and K U Karanth in Conservation Biology) 2003
- The Economics of Protecting Tiger Populations: Linking Household Behavior to Poaching and Prey Depletion (R Damania, R Stringer, K U Karanth, B Stith in Land Economics) 2003
- Tiger ecology and conservation in the Indian subcontinent (in Journal of Bombay Natural History Society) 2003
- Science deficiency in conservation practice: the monitoring of tiger populations in India (K U Karanth et al in Animal Conservation) 2003
- Estimation of large herbivore densities in the tropical forests of southern India using distance sampling (D Jathanna, K U Karanth, A J T Johnsingh in Journal of Zoological Society of London) 2003
- Conservation and Society (in Conservation and Society) 2003
- Nagarahole limits and opportunities in wildlife conservation (in Making Parks Work) 2002
- Mitigating human-wildlife conflicts in southern Asia (K U Karanth, M D Madhusudhan in Making Parks Work) 2002
- Local hunting and large mammals conservation in India (M D Madhusudhan, K U Karanth in Ambio) 2002
- Behavioural correlates of predation by tiger, leopard and dhole in Nagarahole, India (K U Karanth and M E Sunquist in Journal of Zoology) 2000
- Hunting for an answer: Local hunters and large mammal conservation in India (M D Madhusudhan, K U Karanth in Hunting for sustainability in tropical forests) 2000
- Ecology, behavior and resilience of the tiger and its conservation needs (M E Sunquist, F C Sunquist, K U Karanth in Riding the Tiger) 1999
- Counting tigers with confidence (in Riding the Tiger) 1999
- An ecology based method for defining priorities for large mammal conservation : The tiger case study (K U Karanth et al in Conservation Biology) 1998
- Avoiding paper tigers and saving real tigers (K U Karanth, M D Madhusudhan in Conservation Biology) 1997
- Prey selection by tiger, leopard and dhole in tropical forests (K U Karanth, M E Sunquist in Journal of Animal Ecology) 1995
- Estimating tiger populations from camera-trap data using capture-recapture models (in Biological Conservation) 1995
- Correcting for overdispersion of prey selectivity (W A Link, K U Karanth in Ecology) 1994
- Conservation prospects for lion-tailed macaques in Karnataka (in Zoo Biology) 1992
- Ecology and management of tiger in tropical Asia (in Wildlife Conservation: Present Trends and Perspectives for the 21st Century) 1991
- Line transect method for censusing elephants in Nagarahole (in Censusing elephants in forests) 1991
- Dry-zone afforestation and its impact on blackbuck populations (K U Karanth, M Singh in Conservation in developing countries: problems and prospects) 1990
- Analysis of predator-prey balance in Bandipur Tiger Reserve with reference to census reports (in Journal of Bombay Natural History Society) 1988
- Tigers in India: a critical review of field censuses (in Tigers of the world: The biology, biopolitics, management and conservation of an endangered species) 1987
- Status of wildlife and habitat conservation in Karnataka (in Journal of Bombay Natural History Society) 1986
- Ecological status of the liontailed macaque and its rainforest habitat in Karnataka (in Primate Conservation) 1985
- Bhadra wildlife sanctuary and its endangered ecosystem (in Journal of Bombay Natural History Society) 1982
Books
- The Way of the Tiger (Hardcover and Paperback, the latter by Orient Longman)
- View from the Machan - How Science Can Save The Fragile Predator (Orient Longman)
Notes
- ^ Dreifus, Claudia. "Interview". New York Times, reprinted in International Herald Tribune. Retrieved 2006-09-03.
- ^ Gubbi, Sanjay. "The tiger trail". The Hindu. Retrieved 2006-09-03.