Prosper is remarkably young and despite not being formally trained, his knowledge and passion for India’s wildlife has won him the reputation of a giant-killer with many hard-fought conservation battles under his belt.At 24 he is the President of the Southern Zone of the Garo Students’ Union, the apex body of Garo Youth.

They have studied hornbills, small carnivores and bird communities in the Western Ghats and have documented the destruction wreaked by human agriculture on thin forest soils.They have also watched as ill-advised industrial projects and monoculture plantations replaced the Annamalai and Valparai rainforests that India so desperately needs, if we are to have any chance of countering the worst impacts of climate change.

Aamod Zambre has worked in one of the most exciting places on the planet – Arunachal Pradesh’s Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary. Here conservation biologists first recorded the existence of the subspecies of a snake Protobothrops jerdonii xanthomelas and a scorpion, Euscorpiops bhutanensis.

Week after week for the past three years, Vijay Pinjarkar, Special Correspondent with the Times of India, has investigated scores of environmental stories, in the process unearthing dark and hidden secrets that many powerful people would have preferred to kill.

Vishal Jayant Bhave, just 23 years old, has managed to discover as many as 80 new Opisthobranch that were previously unknown in India.He lives to study and protect the sea and was born and brought up in Ratnagiri, a small coastal town inMaharashtra.

For dedicating his life to the protection of wild nature through the use of cinematography and for his courage and determination in producing films – with or without sponsorships – that have influenced policy and saved endangered species.

Paresh Chandrakant Porab, Goa Forest Department, conducts raids on poachers, protects turtle nesting sites, and surveys forest lands to identify them for their potential as future sanctuaries and national parks. He was key to the team that conducted the scientific surveys that resulted in the declaration of the incredible Mhadei and Netravali Wildlife Sanctuaries in Goa.

Narhari Bagarao represents the rock foundation upon which all the ambitious wildlife and biodiversity initiatives of conservationists, administrators, scientists and nature lovers are built.

He has arrested over 100 people in a lifetime devoted to the protection of the tiger and has been attacked, ambushed and routinely threatened for his pains.But nothing is able to shake his steely resolve to protect the forest he loves. One of Project Tiger’s longest-serving foot soldiers, he joined Similipal’s frontline team in 1974.

Brijendra Singh is an extraordinary man by any measure. One of India’s leading elephant experts, his name is synonymous with the Corbett Tiger Reserve.