Diksha Barthwal,Project Fellow


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I belong to the state of Uttarakhand, the scenic beauty of which made me appreciative of nature early on. I was very fascinated by the forests and wildlife around. Later, I decided to pursue my Master’s degree in Biodiversity and Conservation from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. The field visits during my masters exposed me to various aspects of nature. For my master’s dissertation, I worked on the “Ecology of Indian Giant Flying Squirrel (Petauristaphilippensis) in South Gujarat with Special Reference to Habitat Use to Suggest Conservation strategies”. Afterwards, I went on to do an internship at the Wildlife Institute of India on the topic “Analysis and Sorting of Camera Trap Data”. I then did another internship at WII in the project “Biodiversity Finance Initiative” (BIOFIN).

Presently, I am working as a Project Fellow in BIOFIN. In this project, we are trying to identify various resources through which money could be diverted towards conservation in India. I have been carrying out the Policy and Institutional Review (PIR) and Biodiversity Expenditure Review (BER). I am also working on the potential finance mechanisms that could be implemented in India for biodiversity conservation.

My interest lies in the study of behavioural ecology of mammals and socio economic studies like economic evaluation of ecosystem services, rural communities’ perception relative to conservation, human wildlife conflict.