Tipu: Sultan of the Siwaliks - Parag Honour List - 2023
- Publisher : Speaking Tiger
- Publishing year : December 2021
- Binding : Paperback
- ISBN : 9789354471148
- Imprint : Speaking Tiger
- Age Group : Young Adult
- Language : English
Sometime in the mid-1990s, Amirtharaj Christy Williams, an Asian elephant specialist, went to Rajaji National Park in Ut ...
Sometime in the mid-1990s, Amirtharaj Christy Williams, an Asian elephant specialist, went to Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand as a greenhorn research fellow. His task was to radio-collar and track several elephants in the Siwalik hills. As he went about his work, he formed close associations with several of these amazing pachyderms: Mallika, the matriarch who held her herd together; Kiruba, a new mother; Shahrukh, the young shy male; and Tipu, the Sultan of the Siwaliks, the tallest elephant ever recorded in the national park and the gentlest of giants.
In this memoir, Christy recalls the heady years of hope and desperation as his team struggled against encroachment and human-animal conflict to create space for the elephant herds.
Amirtharaj Christy Williams is a wildlife biologist who started his academic career working for a Ph.D. on elephants in the Rajaji-Corbett landscape in Uttarakhand. Since then he has been working for over two decades to save Asian elephants across several range countries from India in the west to Malaysian Borneo in the east. His work has ranged from raising money to put boots on the ground to protect elephants to lobbying political leadership for policy changes that are elephant friendly. He is currently based in Saudi Arabia’s NEOM region where he is involved in setting up a 2 million ha protected area.
