‘Being a conservationist is disheartening sometimes, but we have to keep cruising on hope and keep making an effort,’ says Tara Gandhi, renowned author and conservationist on species decline. In this conversation with Monisha Raman, Tara recollects her early years as a conservationist, among the few women on the field, working with Dr Salim Ali and the making of her book,Gentle Sharks, Glowing Worms and Other Wonderfully Wild Creatures by Talking Cub, an imprint of Speaking Tiger Books.

Tara Gandhi is a conservationist and ornithologist who was guided by Dr Sálim Ali for her M.Sc degree in Zoology with specialisation in Field Ornithology. She worked for the biodiversity conservation programmes of several national and international organisations – Commonwealth Secretariat, London, World Wide Fund for Nature, National Biodiversity Authority and the M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. She conducted extensive status studies of wildlife protected areas including in the Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands and documented the fauna of cities in India as well as in the countries where she lived and travelled.

The books authored and edited by her include A Bird’s Eye View, an anthology of Dr.Sálim Ali’s writings, Birds, Wild Animals and Agriculture – Conflict and Coexistence in India and most recently Words for Birds ( 2021), a collection of Dr Sálim Ali’s radio talks.

Currently, Tara Gandhi is a Trustee of the Wildlife Trust of India, New Delhi and serves on the committees of BNHS-India, Madras Naturalists’ Society and the Institutional Ethics Committee of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-M).

Monisha Raman is the author of The Highlands of Yore (Readomania, India, 2025& Running Wild Press NA and Europe, 2026). Her essays and short stories have appeared in various literary and ecological magazines including New Asian Writing, Kitaab, Where the Leaves Fall, It’s Freezing in LA, Singapore Unbound, Borderless Journal, Usawa Literary Review, Phenomenal Literature and several more.

Her work has also appeared in anthologies by IHRAM Press, Oreades Press, Four Palaces Publishing, Rupa Publications and is forthcoming in books by LURU. She is an alumna of the Granta Writers’ Workshop (nature writing). She edits the Green Literature Festival’s monthly newsletter.

Her work can be found at Monisha Raman – Writer & Editor.