Tamanna Kalam
About me
I am a wildlife conservationist from India and I study the drivers, patterns, and impacts of human-wildlife conflict on both humans and wildlife.
My interest in this conservation issue began during my Masters, where I surveyed 78 tea plantations in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, South India, to assess the presence, and opinion of local communities towards 12 mammalian species. Post my Masters, I worked with Greenpeace India, where I conducted outreach programmes for different sectors (e.g., corporates and schools) to sensitise them towards global issues like deforestation and climate change. I later worked with Care Earth Trust, where I studied the drivers of land use and land cover change and its impact on human-wildlife conflict in southern India.
In 2016, I worked with WWF-India in Assam, North-east India. I studied the different types of damages caused by wild Asian elephants in tea plantations and also identified the locations of lethal electric fences (installed to deter elephant forays) and sagging power lines. I also developed localised mitigation measures to prevent incidents of conflict from arising in the future. From 2017 to 2020, I worked at Pondicherry University, wherein I assessed the genetic diversity and gene flow among different elephant populations across central and southern India.
Over the years, I grew more interested in understanding how habitat loss influences wildlife distribution and human-wildlife conflict. For my PhD, I will be studying how tropical dry forests have changed in India since the 20th century and how this has affected megafauna distribution and human-wildlife conflict.
Curriculum Vitae