Text by: Prasad Ramamurthy
Photos courtesy: Ramki Sreenivasan
When you hear the statement “I’m a comic book freak… Sandman series, Maus, Logicomix… I love them!” you just might think I’ve got the wrong Ramakrishnan Sreenivasan on the phone line. Not the Ramki who co-founded Conservation India; who speaks on the ethics of wildlife photography; who launches campaigns to protect critical species; and who litigates to conserve urban grasslands. But, the more you talk to Ramki, the more you realise these are but facets of who he is. His fascination for graphic novels, math, yoga scriptures; his fanboying of rock band Pink Floyd; his ardent love for nature and all its wondrous things. And his recent foray into raising funds for underprivileged children afflicted with cancer. All pieces to the puzzle that is Ramki.
To begin to know him, you need to look at Ramki’s career in digital marketing. He co-founded his first start-up, Intercept, back in 1998, when the Internet was still largely tethered to a land line. When the dot com bust ended Intercept’s profitable run, Ramki and his colleagues pivoted to analysing data for clients such P&G and IBM. That company, Marketics, was bought over in 2007 by WNS, an Indian BPO. “It came at the right time,” says Ramki. “We [the three founders] loved our business, but we wanted to move on. Each of us had a cause we were passionate about.”
(Left) Ramki sits on the banks of the Doyang reservoir, the primary roost of the migrating falcons. (Right) Amur falcons were once widely hunted by poachers, but Ramki and a few other conservationists worked with local communities to discourage the practice. Today, the region is mostly a safe haven for the birds.
Cover Photo: Ramki Sreenivasan is a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur-turned-birdwatcher, wildlife photographer and conservationist.
By 2007 Ramki had already returned to a childhood calling, birdwatching, and had started photographing rare birds in the Northeast, mostly with birding buddy Shashank Dalvi. “They were so poorly documented,” he explains. “There were scientific studies, yes. But for what joy? There was nothing in the public domain.” By that he means non-academic material that would be of interest to birdwatching fans like himself. “Look, I’ve been a birdwatcher since age nine. I asked an uncle to get me a pair of binoculars and there was Salim Ali’s guidebook, which we shared among friends,” he tells me, matter-of-factly, of his years growing up in Chennai. “We used to spend time watching birds. Taking notes. If possible, sketching them in the field.” The love for wildlife was furthered through Attenborough documentaries, treks to Anaimalai, Mudumalai and the Nilgiris and visits to Guindy National Park and Vedanthangal, a heronry. “We grew up that way,” he says.
Through the late 2000s, the avian world, once again, had stimulated Ramki’s personal growth. But by 2011 it led him to question what he was doing. “OK, I have a zillion pictures. How is that helping wildlife?” he asked himself. Another issue that contributed to the questioning was the exponential growth in the number of people interested in wildlife photography. “It felt like there were a million people with long lenses nudging and shoving each other to get the perfect shot. And they were coming, shooting and leaving with little regard to damaging the environment and the subject in the process.” He met celebrated wildlife filmmaker Shekar Dattatri who also had a similar crisis of purpose. Together they decided to set up Conservation India (CI). “We arrived at the idea that we will institutionalise learnings, case studies and best practices on one neutral and credible platform.” The aim, as Ramki puts it, was to provide “the fire power, the knowledge and the correct legal interpretations” to make conservation possible. This reminds me of something Ramki had said in the context of data analysis. “When you figure out what you don’t know, you can use analytics to lift a much heavier load…” Meaning: when you have the right information you can use it to achieve your end goal. This is pretty much what he’s done over the past decade. Collect and disseminate information to positively impact conservation.
A public awareness campaign spearheaded by Conservation India and several leading NGOs, in 2012, helped prevent the construction of a defence radar station on Narcondam island, which is home to an endangered and endemic species of hornbill.
Ramki’s most famous win might well be bringing an end to the hunting of Amur falcons in Nagaland. In 2011, Ramki, as part of a birding group, teamed up with journalist and conservationist Bano Haralu (now managing trustee of the Nagaland Wildlife and Biodiversity Conservation Trust) to conduct a state-wide survey of birds and other wildlife for the Nagaland government. The survey, among other things, yielded information on the indiscriminate hunting of Amur flacons when they came to roost there while migrating from Siberia to Africa. The following year, the team returned to the Doyang reservoir in Nagaland. Their investigation found evidence that nearly 140,000 Amur falcons were being hunted each year for their meat. Immediately, they launched a campaign that spoke to government officials at the national and local levels, and to community elders of the villages where the hunting prevailed. The result was a full implementation of the ban on hunting Amur falcons. And a move to change the attitudes of locals — from being hunters to the birds’ guardians.
There were other headline grabbing initiatives such as the Indian Coast Guard’s attempt, in 2012, to set up a radar installation on the island of Narcondam, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The tiny island is home to an endemic species of hornbills (about 300 in 2012), that experts believe might be threatened by the presence of humans. Conservation India spearheaded an awareness campaign, which along with media attention, resulted in the project being halted. That project, though, has since received approval. “Conservation is a long-drawn-out affair,” Ramki says, “The next government may decide to develop Narcondam for tourism or whatever, which will need another campaign.” With dry humour he adds, “conservation is no walk in the park.”
Ramki started his journey in wildlife as a photographer. Today, he uses the same skill to raise funds and campaign for conservation issues. Photo: Shashank Dalvi
Ramki’s cynicism with twitchers – a term used to describe photographers whose only aim is to make pictures – and the methods adopted by many, including the use of drones and the trimming of foliage to frame nests better, has led him to speak extensively on the ethics of wildlife photography. In a 2011 piece, co-authored with Shekar Dattatri, he argues for more wildlife photographers to shoot what they call conservation photography. Images of “road kills, mined slopes, deforested hillsides, ugly constructions within forests” which will help conservation efforts. On the CI website, they created a gallery for displaying such photos. In 2016, the duo wrote Stop! Don’t Shoot Like That – A Guide To Ethical Wildlife Photography, which not only lists dos and don’ts for photographers, but also presents a case for better behaviour out in the wild.
Ramki is certainly the sort of man who when life hands him lemons, makes lemonade. It’s exactly what he did when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017. On his road to recovery, he realised just how expensive curing cancers can be. “People have to take life and death decisions based on money,” he says, in a sombre voice. Processing all that he had learnt he decided earlier this year to put those “zillions of pictures” to good use. To offer prints of his work (via https://www.wildlifeforcancer.com/) in exchange for donations to the Iksha Foundation — a charity that supports underprivileged children suffering from retinoblastoma, a form of cancer that starts in the eyes and if neglected results in painful death. The Foundation undertakes not just the child’s care, but often has to ensure their parents — mostly daily wage earners — are looked after as well. This is Ramki’s way of giving back. “I just felt it wasn’t enough to just say thank you to all those who helped me get cured,” he says. “And wildlife helped me through my healing process. So, I thought why not use that to help others.” This reminds me of another phrase Ramki used in the course of our conversation: to be “the voice of the voiceless”. To be the hero, if you will, to the proverbial underdog. Indeed, not all heroes wear capes.
