Dr Ajith Kumar was a Faculty at the Wildlife Institute of India and Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History and was the Director of the Master’s Program in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences from 2003 to 2020. He is presently an Affiliate Scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies; Bangalore He began his wildlife career with a survey of primates in South India in the late 1970s. His doctorate, from Cambridge University, was on the ecology and population dynamics of the lion-tailed macaque. This study introduced him to the tropical rainforest in the Western Ghats, where he and his students later studied herpetofauna, small carnivores, rodents, and arboreal mammals for the next many years, especially in the context of habitat fragmentation. Sikkim Himalaya has been another area of interest to him, where he and his colleagues have studied mammals, herpetofauna and birds. His research interests include rainforest ecology, primates, and small carnivores.