Tana Tapi, Divisional Forest Officer, Pakke Tiger Reserve, Arunachal Pradesh is just such a man. He and his team work in near impenetrable forests against all odds to protect a vital park and its wildlife. For six years now, he has been setting up anti-poaching infrastructure including 32 RCC camps, 65 km. of patrolling paths and 41 km. of rough motorable roads.

Bibha Sonowal, Pallabita Bora, Swarnalata Bhuyan and Anita Das are courageous women forest guards of Kaziranga. Theirs is the very first team of female wildlife defenders in the park, they have been patrolling this world famous rhino and tiger forest for a year now.

Ajjinanda Thamoo Poovaiah is a wildlife protector, businessman, activist and conservationist. Unable to stomach the devastation that unchecked tree felling was having on the Kodagu district of Karnataka, Poovaiah put together a network of local residents to fight against the all-powerful timber mafia 15 years ago. In the process he discovered to his dismay that there was a nexus between criminals and some forest officials.

They are living proof that change is possible. Among our nation's most celebrated tribal communities, the Chenchus were once hunter gatherers. Instead of being lured by the all-powerful wildlife trade, these young men, more visionary than most of their urban counterparts,

He has been a protector of wildernesses for over three decades. As head of the post-graduate department of Zoology at the S.G.B Amravati University, he has critiqued several falsified Environment Impact Analysis, or EIA Reports by academicians paid to provide a justification for the destruction of tiger habitats.

Deshpande has spent the last decade defending wildlife the best way he knows how "using his pen. His in-depth articles have covered human-animal conflict, the illegal antler trade, the timber mafia and the occasional misdemeanors of Forest Department officials gone wrong.

Dr. Parvish Pandya and Professor Sudhakar Solomon Raj have equipped their students with the knowledge they need to care for and defend nature.Dr. Pandya teaches Zoology at Bhavan's College, Mumbai and has shaped and guided an uncounted number of naturalists.

Sudhakar Solomon Raj is a political science and mass media teacher at Wilson College. He founded and heads the strong and purposeful Wilson College Nature Club whose members he has been escorting to distant forests for almost three decades in an effort to make them fall in love with and defend India's wildernesses.

Naturalist, reptile enthusiast, spider and scorpion expert and researcher, at 22 years, Zeeshan Mirza has probably gathered as much natural history field experience as someone twice his age

Sooraj began his wildlife journey at the ripe old age of six years when his parents took him to the Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary at Bharatpur. His interest was further sparked because his school Lilavati Podar in Santa Cruz was one among the 650 that had registered with Kids for Tigers, the Sanctuary Tiger Programme, 10 years ago.

Monsoon Jyoti Gogoi's passion is butterflies. His youth belies the fire in his belly for all things natural. He has spent the past five years recording and photographing over 500 butterfly species in Upper Assam, including some rare and endangered species that no naturalists had ever documented before.