Valmik Thapar is one of the popular Indian conservationists. He is also a natural historian. Valmik Thapar is the author of around 14 books and various articles associated with wildlife of India. Further, he has also produced a wide range of television programmes. Today, Valmik Thapar is considered as one of the most respected and renowned conservationists and wildlife experts of India, having produced and narrated several documentaries on the country`s natural habitat for popular channels like BBC, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel and Animal Planet. Valmik Thapar is married to theatre personality and actress Sanjana Kapoor.
Professional Life of Valmik Thapar
Valmik Thapar has spent decades particularly following the circumstances of the tiger population of the country. His stewardship of Ranthambore Foundation was spotted and he was later appointed as a member of Tiger Task Force of the year 2005 by the Government of India. At the time of finalising the report of the Task Force, he expressed his opposition at the general approach of the high power committee of the force. Valmik Thapar criticised the Task Force outlook in his note as extremely focussed on the prospects of co-existence of humans and tigers.
He presented that this view was not constant with the aim of the panel. According to him, the Task Force has paid insufficient attention to the biggest questions that face tiger preservation today, like poaching.
The writings of Valmik Thapar have critically analysed the apparent failure of Project Tiger, which is a conservation apparatus created by the Government of India. He has strongly critiqued Project Tiger, and the mismanagement by a forest bureaucracy, which according to him is largely not methodically trained. The recent book by Valmik Thapar `The Last Tiger` explains this case strongly. His criticism also relates to the unwillingness of India`s Ministry of Environment and Forests for curbing poaching through equipped patrols as well as its refusal to open the forests for scholarly scientific surveys. Further, his well known relationship with a female tigress `Macchli` is documented in some of his stories.
Woks of Valmik Thapar
Some of the popular television works of Valmik Thapar are Tiger Crisis, Land of the Tiger, Tigers` Fortress, Danger in Tiger Paradise, Search for Tigers and Overpopulation.
