Dr. Rajesh Gopal has been closely associated with ‘Project Tiger’ in India for almost 35 years. As a former member of the Indian Forest Service, he was the Director of several tiger rich reserves in Central India like Kanha and Bandhavgarh for over a decade, while taking many initiatives to protect the tiger, its habitat and prey. He implemented special innovative in-situ actions to conserve the endangered Central Indian swamp deer as well. As a zoologist with a doctorate on the ‘barasingha’ (swamp deer), he brought experience in the science of field management, while restructuring the management plan of Kanha.

His subsequent long stint working for the Government of India as the national coordinator of Project Tiger resulted in many milestone initiatives on the tiger front, including switching to the double sampling method using camera traps for country level tiger assessment; inclusion of a separate set of legal provisions for tiger conservation in India’s national legislation; revision of the Project Tiger scheme with enhanced resource allocation; increase in Project Tiger coverage from 25 reserves in 2001 to 47 in 2015;and creation of National Tiger Conservation Authority, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau. Additional initiatives included year round tiger monitoring, e–surveillance, creation of a tiger photo database national repository, deploying special operators in the field, institutionalising smart patrolling, tiger translocation to low density habitats, and supporting research projects in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India.

Such concerted efforts have brought in a paradigm shift in tiger conservation, with a strengthened exclusive ‘tiger agenda’ in core areas, complemented by an equally aggressive ‘inclusive’ co-occurrence agenda in buffers and corridors to address the human-tiger interface. He has authored three books and a number of research papers and has received several awards including the JN Fellowship.