page_title: Valmik Thapar
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Valmik Thapar / Career
caption_attribution_description: A tiger in India's Bandhavgarh reserve
context_page_description: Valmik Thapar is an Indian naturalist, conservationist and writer. He is the author of 14 books and several articles, and has produced a range of programmes for television. Today he is one of India's most respected wildlife experts and conservationists, having produced and narrated documentaries on India's natural habitat for such media as the BBC, Animal Planet, Discovery and National Geographic.
context_section_description: Valmik Thapar spent decades following the fortunes of India's tiger population. He was influenced by Fateh Singh Rathore.
  His stewardship of the Ranthambore Foundation was recognised and he was appointed a member of the Tiger Task Force of 2005 by the Government of India. He criticised the majority Task Force view in his dissent note as excessively focussed on the prospects of co-existence of tigers and humans, which was, in his view not consistent with the objective of the panel.
  His writings have analysed the perceived failure of Project Tiger, a conservation apparatus created in 1973 by the Government of India. He has critiqued Project Tiger, drawing attention to its mismanagement by a forest bureaucracy that is largely not scientifically trained. His most recent book The Last Tiger (Oxford University Press) makes this case strongly.
  Among the consistent criticisms levelled by Thapar at India's Ministry of Environment and Forests relates to its unwillingness to curb poaching through armed patrols and its refusal to open forests to scholarly scientific enquiry.
  His famous relationship with 'Macchli' a female tigress is documented in some of his chronicles.
caption: A tiger in India's Bandhavgarh reserve in 2006
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