Urban Taru is a project to understand how people and wildlife interact with trees in urban areas.

Vallari Sheel

Vallari is a PhD Candidate in the Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology Program in Dr Madhusudan Katti’s Reconciliation Ecology Lab at North Carolina State University. She started Urban Taru to document her PhD research which examines the ecological, social and cultural interactions of urban trees with wildlife and people in Indian cities. Her research seeks to understand how urban wildlife interact with different tree species, and citizens’ perceptions and values of urban trees.

Vallari is an advocate for native plants and enjoys gardening. She grows different food plants and wildlife-friendly native plants in her home garden.

Swaroop Patankar

Swaroop is a research associate at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. She manages the Bangalore component of the Urban Taru project, studying the ecological and social interactions with urban trees in the city. She has a masters degree in Environmental Science and Technology from Institute of Environment Education and Research, Pune. She has worked as a project biologist in the All-India Tiger Estimation Project before shifting focus to urban ecological research. She has a keen interest in understanding trait adaptations in urban vertebrates and urbanization induced evolution in animals. 

Dr Madhusudan Katti

Associate Professor, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, USA

Dr. Madhusudan Katti is an Associate Professor in the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program for Leadership in Public Science and the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. An ecologist by training, he now engages local communities and the broader public in studying how human activities and histories of colonization and segregation shape the distribution of nature and biodiversity in urban areas. His work centers Reconciliation Ecology—the application of evolutionary ecology to find real-world solutions for reconciling biodiversity conservation with human wellbeing. He is also interested in the ethics of ecological research, nature conservation, and of how humans learn to live with other species. He is actively engaged in rethinking and redesigning his own research and the teaching of ecology and conservation biology within a broader framework of decolonizing science.

Dr Jayanti Ray-Mukherjee

Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University

Jayanti is a professor at Azim Premji University who is a plant ecologist. She is interested in understanding how plants cope with stress in natural, urban, and agricultural ecosystems. She uses the functional trait currency to examine the mechanisms related to stress and how individual plant responses to stress can shape a plant community. She is interested in asking questions about population-level mechanisms and community-level plant species interactions. She uses this trait-based platform to evaluate plants suitable for restoration purposes. She is also very keen on understanding how researchers and managers collaborate efficiently and how the gap between science and practice can be bridged.

Rubina Rajan

Rubina is a post graduate in Wildlife Sciences with a deep fascination for nature. She has worked on various research projects involving human – leopard conflict, primate behaviour among others. She hopes to contribute actively towards nature conservation and her major areas of interest include human animal interactions, urban ecology and animal behaviour with a special focus on primates. She is also an artist and her work is deeply inspired by nature.

Mansi Kumar

Mansi has a master’s degree in wildlife biology and is interested in ex-situ conservation, animal behaviour and urban ecology. She is an amateur photographer and writer and likes to share personal experiences as a wildlifer on social media. She regularly gets involved with conservation and wildlife awareness events especially for young kids. .

Nidhi Raikwar

Nidhi is a student of biodiversity and conservation. She fell in love with birds after her first bird watching experience on 14th February 2021. She has been studying avifauna in Delhi for the last two years, first as part of her master’s thesis and then as a field intern with Urban Taru. She is an avid reader and a cat person.

Mukhta K

Mukhta has completed her master’s degree in botany from St Joseph’s College Autonomous. She has worked as an intern for FlippAR as part of Smart City Project for tree mapping. Her research interests include ecology, conservation, and sustainability.

Samyamee

While growing up in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, Samyamee found herself  enchanted by the green spaces the cities had to offer; particularly parks, beaches and lakes. This interest was further deepened by the occasional visits to nearby hill stations. These experiences nudged her to pursue a Bachelor’s in Botany and Zoology. However, studying these subjects as isolated disciplines did not give her a full picture of the condition of the living world around, and she felt drawn towards the interdisciplinary nature of ecology.

Birdwatching was her first systematic attempt at observing the wildlife in her surroundings . She has  studied crickets in the lab, and frogs in the field (in Western Ghats and Manipal) as part of her internships at CES (IISc) and ATREE respectively. Her observations in the field got her interested in community ecology, which she  was able to explore further while working on her Master’s thesis on mixed-species flocks. Currently, she is working with Urban Taru, which allows her to understand the behaviours and adaptations of urban wildlife, and helps uncover the ecosystem services that fruiting and flowering trees provide.

Joshika Komarla

Joshika Komarla is a chemistry, botany, and zoology graduate from St. Joseph’s University. She has worked with the Karnataka Horticulture Department on the Bangalore Smart City Project to collect taxonomic data for Bangalore flora. She’s currently also a staff writer at Science ABC and working on the Squirrels of India database with the Sciurid Lab at IISER, Tirupati. An aspiring ecologist, her interests lie in ecosystem management, evolutionary biochemistry, and animal behavior.

Raihanul Islam Sarkar

Raihanul has been involved in wildlife conservation since 2021. He has been associated with Wildlife Crime Control Bureau and Delhi Wetland Authority to protect biodiversity and wildlife. He actively volunteers with WWF and his core interest lies in studying herpetofauna and big cats. He loves being on the field, exploring raw nature. An avid photographer, he is always ready to click.

Hareesha Shasthri P R

Being from Western Ghats of Karnataka, the passion for nature was very innate in Hareesha. He was introduced to systematic observation and research by a group of birders he met while pursuing his bachelor’s degree. He then joined Wildlife Institute of India as an intern, where he worked on coldwater fishes and aquatic invertebrates. Hareesha completed his master’s in wildlife biology from Bharatidasan University, Tamil Nadu in 2021. For his master’s dissertation, he worked on the effect of urban noise on distribution of bird communities in Delhi under the Urban Taru project.His work interests range from reconciliation ecology to rural livelihood. He is also trying his hands on  sustainable farming and apiculture. Currently, he is working as Field Officer at Wildlife Trust of India.

Aishwarya Joshi

Aishwarya has a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology from Gargi College, University of Delhi and a Master’s degree in Environment Management from Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. Her Master’s degree project focused on assessing the impacts of powerlines on birds in a multiple use grassland landscape.

After finishing her post-graduation, she worked briefly with Wildlife Trust of India before joining Urban Taru with Vallari, where she observed birds, native trees and their interactions in the urban landscape of Delhi. She is currently pursuing her second masters in Rural Management from Institute of Rural Management, Anand. During her stint at IRMA, she interned with Coca-Cola and helped prepare a sustainability plan for Coca-Cola Bangladesh. Apart from work, Aishwarya enjoys trekking in the Himalayas, birding & re-reading Harry Potter.