Sanjayan Muttulingam

Sanjayan Muttulingam "is the Lead Scientist for one of the largest conservation organizations in the world, The Nature Conservancy. He and his team are tasked with providing the scientific underpinning for strategic decision making and for ensuring that new trends and risks are assimilated in the Conservancy’s work.

"Sanjayan holds a doctorate in Conservation Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied with one of the founders of the conservation movement, Dr. Michael Soule. He is currently on the faculty of the Wildlife Program at the University of Montana, where his work focuses on how conservation can be linked to sustainable poverty alleviation efforts and how ecosystem services, if managed, can benefit both humans and wildlife.

"Sanjayan’s work has received extensive media coverage including The New York Times, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, Financial Times, Los Angles Times, The Independent (UK), New Scientist (UK), Die Ziet (Germany), Focus (Germany), National Geographic Adventure and Vanity Fair amongst others, as well as broadcasts on National Public Radio (Morning Edition & Life on Earth), Discovery Channel, Planet Green, Animal Planet, and National Geographic Television. He is featured in Discovery Channel’s award winning “Planet Earth” series and he co-hosted several documentaries including a special during their top rated “Shark Week”. He is a frequent guest on NBC’s “The Today Show”. The magazine, Men’s Journal recently profiled him as part of their “MJ Environmental Hall of Fame”.

"Sanjayan has published in Science, Nature, and Conservation Biology and co-edited a book titled Connectivity Conservation (Cambridge University Press 2006), about migrations and impediments to wildlife movement. He is also a co-contributor to Planet Earth: The Future (BBC Books 2006, and the BBC television show of the same name). He currently writes a monthly column called “Wild Life” for The Nature Conservancy’s Web site (www.nature.org).

"His next book, which he is currently writing, is about poverty and conservation. Breaks from writing are spent fly fishing, or exploring rarely visited places around the world – the most recent being a complete East-West transect of the Namib Desert in Africa – entirely on foot."

"He completed his Ph.D at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he did his thesis work on genetics and demography with Dr Michael Soule, one of the founding fathers of the field of Conservation Biology.  After a short stint at the World Bank  Sanjayan joined TNC in 1999, first as the Director of Science for the California Program, and later was named one of three Lead Scientists for the organization as a whole...

"Sanjayan is involved with the Natural Capital Project (see http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org/about.html), a collaborative project between TNC, WWF, and Stanford University, co-leading the node on Poverty & Conservation."


 * International Scientific Board of Advisors, Cheetah Conservation Fund

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Kevin R. Crooks - coauthor