IUCN SSC Hornbill Specialist Group

Aparajita leads NCF’s Eastern Himalaya programme (see http://ncf-india.org/programmes/eastern-himalaya), under which research and community-based conservation with hornbills as a flagship have been carried out for 20 years. She completed her PhD on hornbill biology and their role in seed dispersal in 2000. For the last 20 years, she and her team have been engaged in research and conservation with communities in Arunachal Pradesh and since 2013, in some other parts of north-east India. Her work has encompassed long-term research on hornbill biology in north-east India, and a citizen science initiative for hornbills called Hornbill Watch (www.hornbills.in). A Hornbill Nest Adoption Program set up in 2011 protects hornbill nests in forests outside a Protected Area, while providing income to people. A forest restoration project was started in 2014 to help recover degraded forests in Arunachal and Assam. Since 2017, she has also been involved in regional collaboration for conservation of endangered hornbills in SE Asia, especially for the Helmeted Hornbill in Indonesia. She is also currently the Co-Chair (Asia) for the IUCN SSC Hornbill Specialist Group which is trying to facilitate hornbill conservation and research at a global level. Since 2017, the work of the Eastern Himalaya program has also expanded to sites in eastern Assam and north Bengal for research and conservation of hornbills. While a primary focus of her work has been on hornbills, she has studied tree squirrels, carried out exploration surveys that led to new mammal discoveries in Arunachal, camera-trapping studies for mammal species, examined hunting and logging impacts, seed dispersal & seed predation, and long-term monitoring of tree phenology. She has also engaged with communities for conservation that includes initiatives on education, health, rural energy and livelihoods, some of which she views as failures in terms of their conservation outcomes. She now believes that doing basic ecological research is more satisfying and easy than on-ground conservation, and that reconciliation between wildlife and people is not always possible. She believes that field observations and natural history is key to a better understanding of animals. Studying frugivory and seed dispersal is her first love and she often regrets not pursuing that to the extent she had always wanted to. When she is not in the field, she finds peace and joy in watching and photographing birds in the city and making lists on eBird. She has been a member of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the State Wildlife Advisory Board of Arunachal and engaged with the government on the management/evaluation of some tiger reserves and several Protected Areas and critiqued proposed hydro-power projects in north-east India. She has written several books for children. She has published her research work in over 40 peer-reviewed articles. She also writes popular articles and has a blog in which she writes infrequently about her field experiences and other stuff that interests her. Her work has received recognition through several awards, including the National Geographic Emerging Explorer award (2010) and the Whitley Fund for Nature award (2013).

Dr. Lucy Kemp, from a family of ornithologists, initially pursued Marine Biology. However, she later shifted her focus to conservation, particularly the endangered Southern Ground Hornbill, a species her parents worked on too. Her childhood was filled with extremely early, but breath-taking, mornings out looking for groups, and helping to locate nests. There she developed her love of the wild. She feels that this flagship species is an excellent candidate for testing conservation tools, and connecting people throughout South Africa through a common conservation interest, and growing love for this icon of our savannahs.

With a Ph.D. in Conservation Biology, she has led the Mabula Ground Hornbill Project since 2010, is the co-chair for the Hornbill Specialist Group (Africa) and an IUCN SSC CPSG facilitator. Her main interest is how to take sound scientific evidence and use that to formulate on-the-ground conservation action, that considers socio-economic realities, cultural sensitivities and conservation biology. She has been privileged to work on conservation projects in both Namibia and South Africa: black rhino, wild dog, cheetah, high value plants species, community-based natural resource management and food security for communities living in national parks. Her greatest need is to be in wild places and so sees it as her duty to do all she can to help keep wild places wild.