Divya Mudappa - Session 01

(00:00) Early Life, Family, Education Divya Mudappa was born on 2nd November 1971 in Chikmagalur, Karnataka. Her parents are/were from Coorg. Her father had a transferable job where he worked for various plantation and fertiliser companies, like Shaw Wallace. She spent most of her childhood in Madikeri studying at St. Joseph’s Convent but stayed in Hassan for six years in between where she studied at Stephen’s English School. Although she was surrounded by trees and coffee estates while growing up, she did not actively interact with nature or wildlife. However, her family had many cats and dogs. She disliked school but enjoyed reading books, largely fiction that she borrowed from lending libraries, encouraged by her mother. She loved going for long walks alone or with her companions, collecting fruits and fish from forests and tanks. After her board exams, she was sent to Marimallappa PU College, Mysore for 11th and 12th grade where she stayed with her aunt. She loathed the pressure and the competition in her class.

(09:28) Initial inclinations to Biology and Nature During her summer break, Mudappa recalls watching documentaries on National Geographic about Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. Her brother Diveen Appaiah, who was then a student of Botany at Madras Christian College, showed her many things during their long walks which piqued her interest in observing nature. She chose Biology for 11th and 12th grade as it simply made more sense to her than other subjects. She considered studying Veterinary Science as she loved animals but chose not to, as it was looked down upon. She decided to pursue Zoology for her Bachelor’s, hoping to learn about animals but was disappointed when most of her coursework focussed on dissections, microbiology and cell biology. [Archivist's note: Diveen Appaiah is the person interviewee mentions as brother in the interview; name obtained from interviewee post-interview]

(17:11) Travelling in Karnataka Mudappa’s family would accompany her father’s work tours to plantation districts in Karnataka and the Nilgiris. In Karnataka, they travelled mostly to Belur-Halebeed. Her first visit to a Wildlife Sanctuary was from Stephen’s English School to Nagarhole for two days.

(21:20) Undergraduate experience She moved to Chennai to study Zoology for her Bachelor’s at Stella Maris College. Opportunities opened as she joined the Nature Club where they were taught to handle snakes and go on turtle walks. She recalls meeting Sridhar (T. R. S. Raman) and B. Rajasekhar in Guindy National Park and Kartik Shanker at the turtle walks, all of whom were resource persons at the time. Through these experiences, she realised she wanted to study animals and nature. Chitra Ramachandran and Jilly Joseph, her professors at Stella Maris College, encouraged Mudappa to pursue her interests. She also attended talks at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). She did not have the opportunity to explore much her own, owing to strict hostel rules. She learnt about events, Master’s programmes in Wildlife Sciences and came across newspaper clippings shared by friends like Christy Amithraj Williams, John Matthew, B. Rajasekhar and T. R. S. Raman. [Archivist’s note: Interviewee refers to T. R. S. Raman by their nickname, Sridhar, throughout the interview]

(34:11) Life in Pondicherry University T. R. S. Raman in Chennai encouraged her to apply to Pondicherry University’s Master’s in Wildlife Science, which she joined after persuading her parents to let her go. Here, she finally enjoyed her course within classroom walls and outside. Her teachers, Priya Davidar taught plant-animal interactions and N Parthasarathy, focussed on Botany. Mudappa had the opportunity to interact with and learn from her seniors like V. Shantaram, T. Ganesh, Soubadra Devy, Vidya Athreya, Christy Williams, K Yoganand, J. A. Santosh. The course, she says, did not provide much field exposure. However, they went on a few field trips to Vedanthangal, Pichavaram, Pulicat Lake, Kaliveli Lake and Ousteri Lake that were largely restricted to the south. [Archivist’s note: “Vedanthangal”l corrected as Kolli Hills by interviewee post-interview]

(43:47) Nascent ideas on Master’s thesis and protests Vidya Athreya, who was studying frugivory and dispersal, encouraged Mudappa to visit her in the field in Topslip, during her summer break. There, Mudappa was introduced to Ragupathy Kannan, who was studying Great Hornbills for his PhD, with whom she interned for a month. During this period, she made observations on the breeding behaviour of the Great Hornbill and studied tree phenology. She also began learning about and exploring rainforests. Eventually, she decided to study the Malabar Gray Hornbill for her Master’s thesis. Although she heard about issues like ozone layer depletion, curiosity was still what drove her to study wildlife and not conservation. She recalls going to protests from college against the felling of trees for the construction of the East Coast Road and to Kaliveli Lake but did not have serious discussions regarding conservation.

(49:27) Experience in the field She learnt to carry out observations on birds and nests during the internship. Kannan helped her develop a proposal for her thesis and encouraged her to raise a grant. Her thesis focussed on the breeding biology and nesting ecology of the Malabar Gray Hornbill. Ganesan S., from Eramaparai village who had worked with researchers before (including Vidya) and was familiar with the forests, helped her carry out the study. Mudappa recalls being enchanted by the forest, learning new things every day; she believed that protected areas were truly protected. However, she recollects a few events like a fire burning down a Hornbill nest, observing many teak plantations without forest regeneration, and meeting forest officers, who protected the forest but, on the side allowed logging and hunting in protected areas. She also met Ravi Chellam, Ajith Kumar and Barry Noon who were scouting the forest to study the impact of fragmentation on animals. She began reading global literature on hornbills, conservation and ecology; however, she enjoyed the comprehensive essays written by Kannan and discussing them with him. They also discussed the absence of regeneration of certain species and were concerned about people lopping Ficus to feed elephants, and the death of Canarium trees due to the extraction of resin. She also accompanied Charudutt Mishra to survey the Nilgiri Tahr. Her main focus was still learning about the ecology of a species and understanding a system.

(1:04:16) Work after Master’s By then, Mudappa’s interests were shifting to mammals. She was fascinated by the work done by Ravi Chellam, Ajith Kumar and Barry Noon on the fragmentation project, and hoped to work on it eventually. On Chellam’s suggestion, Mudappa went to the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun (WII) to work as a Research Assistant for a study aimed at identifying sites for Lion relocation. She analysed scat samples to identify the prey available for Lions at Kuno-Palpur. After that, on BC Chaudhury’s recommendation, she took up a project on the wetland survey of Andhra Pradesh, funded by the World Bank, followed by another project aimed at developing a proposal to study cranes. She also met Prakash Gole through the project. Her stay in WII was enriched by sitting through classes of MSc Wildlife Biology and accompanying the class on field trips. Mudappa soon made connections with people working in the field of wildlife biology and came face to face with several conservation issues. The idea of the need for conservation was settling in as she learnt from professors like A. J. T. Johnsingh, Surendra Prakash Goyal, and Gopal S. Rawat and their work. She also published a paper on the breeding biology of the Malabar Gray Hornbill, based on her thesis while at WII.

(1:13:26) Fragmentation Project, work on Brown Palm Civet Mudappa recalls being influenced by Ajith Kumar’s work on small carnivores. She also recollects a conversation with Ravi Sankaran who suggested working on something exotic and not a common species. The Brown Palm Civet was a rare, endemic species with only two photographs of it at the time, which propelled her to study it for the fragmentation project. However, as the project’s main focus was to study herpetofauna and small mammals like rodents, she could not work on the civet initially. Therefore, she studied rodents as prey species of small carnivores. Her interest in rodents diminished after 3 seasons and she wanted to switch to studying small carnivores, particularly the Brown Palm Civet. Her supervisors, Ravi Chellam, Ajith Kumar, Barry Noon and BC Chaudhury were supportive of the decision. She concentrated on the ecology and natural history of the civet by using camera traps, scat analysis and radio tracking. She was even happier to study it after she discovered that they were frugivores and could connect it to forest regeneration and plant communities.

(1:17:52) Anecdotes of meeting Ravi Sankaran and spotting her first Brown Palm Civet Mudappa mentions that towards the end of her Master’s, she made several visits to SACON where Charudutt Mishra and Kannan helped her put together her thesis, which is also where she met Ravi Sankaran. Here, she also met Ajith Kumar, to whom she informed of her Malabar Civet sighting at Karian Shola. Meeting Ajith and learning about his work on small carnivores, prompted her to probe deeper into the study group. Mudappa recalls the events that unfolded during the fragmentation project which led to her first Brown Palm Civet sighting. She adds that the study was conducted partly in the Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve which consisted of contiguous forests and partly in the Anamalais which were fragmented, and which could then be compared for birds and mammals.