Hello everyone, Priya here! I’m so excited to share my work, be it research or popular writing, with you all on On Life and Wildlife, and I hope to hear back from you about my work as well.

I am obsessed with learning more about the fascinating and lesser-known wetland ecosystems in India and the many ecosystem services that they provide to humans and wildlife alike!

A bit about me: I was born in Mumbai, India, and grew up in your typical Indian household. I spent many years listening to stories of nature and Indian culture, which influenced me greatly. My family moved to the USA, to the small but vibrant city of Pittsburgh, when I was quite young, where I completed my B.S. and B.A. in Environmental Geology and Biology in 2015, and received my Masters in Environmental Management degree from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in 2017! I am an avid writer, ecologist, and dancer. My wanderings have taken me to the tea plantations of South India (2013), up into the Lesser Himalayas and the vultures that battle extinction in this rugged landscape (2014), to national parks across the Western USA (2015), to a lonely island national park in the Caribbean to study a raucous seabird species (2016), into the thorn-scrub tiger forests of Rajasthan in a bid to save wildlife corridors (2016), and to village schools in Nagarahole and Bandipur Tiger Reserves, Karnataka, with a conservation education programme (2018).

I am now a PhD student studying the ecohydrology and ecosystem services of Myristica swamps in the central Western Ghats.  My degree is from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru. My work will hopefully continue to build my understanding of conservation and the strong relationship between humans and nature in my vibrant country.

Along with my research, I am trying to keep up with my many passions – science communication, creative writing, Indian classical dance, and reading. I am honoured to be the winner of the 2023 M. Krishnan Memorial Award for Nature Writing,  an all-India competition organized by the Madras Naturalists Society in which I had placed second in 2021. Additionally, I am a Mentor for the Scholastic-India Writers Academy, a platform that mentors school students across India in writing stories and publishing them in an anthology under the Scholastic banner. I adore mentoring young writers and bright minds across India, albeit on a virtual platform. As the founder and co-editor of Youth for Nature e-magazine, a free digital magazine bringing stories of forests, wildlife, and people saving nature across India to youngsters both in India and around the world, I have experience in writing for children, and I also volunteer as a coordinator and editor for the ATREE Young Researchers’ Network (AYRN) blog. Writing, wildlife, and wetlands have my heart!

I’ll sign off with a quote by my favourite author: “Happiness is a mysterious thing, to be found somewhere between too little and too much” – Ruskin Bond