Ghazala Shahabuddin, bulk: 2022-07-12, 2022-11-08

Ghazala Shahabuddin was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Her family moved to India in 1975. Here, she did her schooling at Convent of Jesus and Mary, New Delhi. Having had an interest in wildlife and nature since childhood, while still in school, she became involved with the Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group. She went on to pursue a Bachelor's degree in Zoology from the University of Delhi and a Master's in Wildlife Science from Pondicherry University. She received her Doctoral degree in Ecology and Conservation Biology from Duke University, United States of America in 1998. Throughout her career, she has been associated with a number of organisations and universities. A few of them have been the Council for Social Development, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) India, Ashoka University, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) and Centre for Ecology, Development and Research (CEDAR). Her research, largely multidisciplinary, has been on issues such as displacement, community-based conservation and the impacts of grazing, non-timber forest products and fuel wood extraction, and land use change on forests and biodiversity. She was a recipient of the New India Fellowship in 2007-08. She played a key role in setting up the School of Human Ecology and the Master’s programme in Environment and Development at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) from 2009-14. She has also been involved with the setting up of two NGOs- Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group and CEDAR. She has authored Conservation at the Crossroads: Science, Society and the Future of India’s Wildlife (2010) and edited Making Conservation Work: Securing Biodiversity in this New Century (2007), Nature Without Borders (2014) and Nature in the New Economy: People. Wildlife and the law in India (2019).