National Advisers and Consultants
National Advisers and Consultants
Dr. Suhas Kumar (Retired IFS)
National Adviser
Dr. Suhas Kumar retired as Principal Chief Conservator of Forests from the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department. He spent 23 years of his 35-year-long service, managing, supervising, and guiding the management and training of the officers and staff of national parks, sanctuaries, and tiger reserves of the state. He worked as the Director of Pench National Park for 5 years in its formative period from 1985 to August 1990. He headed the Wildlife Extension Faculty at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, from 1990 to 1996 and contributed to the growth of the training and publishing capabilities of WII. He is a trained wildlife manager, a law graduate, and a Ph.D. in the field of ecotourism in protected areas. He is trained in nature interpretation, conservation education, and ecotourism in the USA, UK, and Australia. Presently, he is a member of WWF-India’s State Advisory Board for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the Governing Body and Governing Council of the National Centre for Human Settlement and Environment, Bhopal, and the Delhi Biodiversity Society. He was the chairman of one of the evaluation teams constituted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Government of India, in 2017-18 for 13 tiger reserves in the country. His write-ups, papers, and case studies have been published in books, magazines, newspapers, and web media. Wildlife Management, Ecotourism Planning, Wildlife Management, Wildlife Rescue, Wildlife Health and Forensic, Wildlife Crime Investigation, and Interpretation & Conservation Education have been areas of his interest and engagement. His most recently published book is – ‘Nature’s Disciple’.
Mr. Sunil Limaye (Retired IFS)
Wildlife Adviser
Mr. Sunil Limaye retired as the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden of Maharashtra State recently in July, 2022. He earlier served as the additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) West Mumbai and prior to that as an Additional PCCF (Wildlife) East and Managing Director of Maharashtra State Ecotourism Board, Nagpur. He has served in various capacities as a Conservator of Forests and Director, Sanjay Gandhi National Park, whereby he started the initiative ‘Mumbaikars for SGNP’ in order to actively involve and promote active participation of all the probable stakeholders to address the issue of Human- Leopard Conflict. He holds a Masters in Forestry and a Diploma in Wildlife Management from Wildlife Institute of India. He has keen interest in research in conservation and has several publications to his credit. He has been an adviser to the Forest Officials of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh,Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradeshpertaining to the issues of management of Human-Wildlife Interface. Researchers have attributed to him the names of biological species namely 1. Cnemaspislimayei( Limaye Day Gecko)andJerzegosunillimayei(Jumping Spider). He has set an example as a dynamic personality with excellent ‘Conservation Leadership Traits’.
Mr. Bivash Ranjan (Retired IFS)
Adviser, Conservation Planning
Mr. Bivash Ranjan, retired as the Additional Director General of Forest and Co-chair and Thematic lead under Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group of G 20, has worked as an Indian Forest Service (IFS) official and managed multiple desks Forests & Wildlife management, Land restoration, Species conservation, the National Mission for Green India, Desertification Cell. He also chaired the Standing Committee of Global Land Initiative (GLI), established under UNCCD. He owns varied international exposure in policy initiatives for natural resource management. He is a highly experienced Indian bureaucrat with 35 years of experience in Forestry, Wildlife Conservation, Landscape Approaches for Sustainable Development, Community-based Natural Resources, Biodiversity Conservation and Enrichment, Landscape Ecology, and Climate Change. He is a member of the Indian Forest Services who has served in Uttar Pradesh and the Government of India in various capacities and successfully demonstrated expertise in strategic planning, high-level negotiation, project management, grant management, policy research, evaluation, stakeholder engagement, and cross-functional team leaderships.
Dr. Anil Kumar Bhardwaj
(Retired IFS)
Adviser, Human Dimensions in Conservation
Dr. Anil Kumar Bhardwaj is from 1985 batch of Indian Forest Service, Kerala Cadre. He has a professional and Academic experience of 38 years in the field of Wildlife Conservation and Forestry. He has managed a number of Protected Areas (PAs) in southern Western Ghats of Kerala. During his tenure as a Director of Periyar Tiger Reserve, he initiated participatory management approaches through ecodevelopment programme which has transformed this tiger reserve as one of the model areas for participatory PA management in the country. Concept of Foundations initiated in Periyar during his period, has now been extended at to all the tiger reserves in India. He retired as Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Chief Wildlife Warden and Head of Forest Force of Kerala in 2018.
He has worked in Wildlife Institute of India (WII) for about 15 years. During this period, he has headed two important departments of the institute and handles a number of national and international projects. Dr. Bhardwaj has extensively worked in the area of ecodevelopment and designed competence-based training programmes for participatory biodiversity conservation. He has also been involved in designing of guidelines for ecodevelopment planning and curricula for landscape conservation programmes. After his retirement, he has been engaged as a Senior Professional Fellow in WII. Currently he is associated with the institute as Community Mobilization Expert for river conservation programmes.
His major areas of interest are park-people interface, community livelihoods and biodiversity conservation, ecotourism and management planning for protected areas & large landscapes. He is a member of World Commission on Protected Areas, IUCN Sustainable use Group; IUCN Environmental, Economic and Social Policy Group; Indian Regional Association for Landscape Ecology; Biodiversity Conservation Society of Kerala and Advisor & Board Member of Ambika Prasad Research Foundation.
Dr. Jeganathan Chockalingamj
(Vice Chancellor, Sarala Birla University, Ranchi)
Adviser, Technological Dimensions in Conservation
Dr. Jeganathan Chockalingam is a remote sensing scientist and academic leader with over 33 years of experience spanning ISRO, the University of Southampton (UK), and Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra. He currently serves as Vice Chancellor of Sarala Birla University, Ranchi, a role he assumed in January 2025, following his tenure as Dean (Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship) and Head of the Department of Remote Sensing at BIT Mesra.
He holds a Ph.D. in Forest Geoinformatics from the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, and an M.Sc. in Geoinformatics from ITC, The Netherlands, where he was awarded the Klaas Jan Beek Award for best research thesis. His research focuses on satellite-based vegetation and environmental analysis, land surface phenology, land cover change modelling, geostatistics, and machine learning applications in earth observation.
With 140+ peer-reviewed publications, 4 books, and 13 book chapters to his credit, he has guided 11 completed and 5 ongoing Ph.D. scholars and supervised 50+ postgraduate students. He has led over 25 sponsored research projects and holds honours including the Springer-Nature Distinguished Editor Award (2025), the ISRO-ISRS President’s Appreciation Medal (2024), and the INSA Teachers Award (2020).
Dr. Archana Bahuguna
(Founder & Director, Himalayan Centre for Art, Culture and Science)
Adviser, Forensic Sciences in Conservation
Dr. Archana Bahuguna is a retired Additional Director of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), where she served until October 2025. She is widely recognized as India’s first Wildlife Forensic Scientist, with specialized expertise in trichotaxonomy, molecular biology, and herpetology. As a Research Associate at the Wildlife Institute of India under an Indo–US Fish and Wildlife Service project, she developed a comprehensive manual on hair identification of threatened mammalian species — a reference still used by the Wildlife Institute of India, ZSI, and the Kerala State Forensic Laboratory, among other institutions.
After joining ZSI in 2004, Dr. Bahuguna established the division’s first molecular laboratory and strengthened molecular research facilities at ZSI’s Northern and High Altitude Regional Centres, generating 738 gene sequences of threatened faunal species across Asia. She has reported numerous new distribution records of reptiles and amphibians, including freshwater turtles, and has described two new amphibian species. She also served as the UNDP-sponsored Nodal Officer for the Uttarakhand State Forest Department during preparation of the state’s first Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.
Her body of work includes 111 research papers and 15 authored books. She is currently the Founder and Director of the Himalayan Centre for Art, Culture and Science (HCACS), established in March 2024 to advance interdisciplinary research and preserve the cultural heritage and biodiversity of the Himalayan region. Beyond science, Dr. Bahuguna is an accomplished science communicator in Hindi and English, a creative writer of Hindi novels, short stories, and poetry, and a painter.
Dr. S. M. Sulaiman Quli
Adviser, Forest and Wildlife Conservation
Dr S, M, Sulaiman Quli with his academic credentials of M. Sc. (Zoology: Ecology) Ph. D. In Science (Zoology: Avian Hematology) and Two Years Diploma in Forestry (1986-1988) from SFS College Dehra Dun, MoEF, Govt. of India, which is declared as equivalent to M.Sc. (Forestry) by Ministry of Environment & Forests, Govt. of India, has worked in various fields of Forestry, Wildlife and allied subjects.
Before retirement from Faculty of Forestry of Birsa Agricultural University on 31st January 2025, he served in various cadres- Asstt. Professor-cum-Jr Scientist to University Professor- cum- Chief Scientist, in the field of Forestry & Wildlife, for more than four decades.
He has guided several students for their M. Sc. And Ph. D. researches, in the field of Agroforestry, Wildlife and Forest based Livelihoods etc. He has more than sixty research publications to his credit and served as an expert with International Organizations like CIFOR and IFAD, besides several State Governments and NGOs. In recognition of his distinguished Research works, The Indian Forester has awarded him the prestigious “BRANDIS Prize” twice during 2002 and 2011.
Worked as Referee to Indian Forester and Journal of Natural Resources Conservation of Horizon Research Corporation of USA