Saket Agasti
Associate Manager - Technology for Conservation , The Habitats Trust
- Member directory
- India
My background is mainly in species conservation, education and capacity exchange. I researched mother-young interactions in gorillas and chimpanzees, in captivity and the wild. After that, I worked for three years in Indonesia, where I developed and implemented youth ambassador and community engagement programmes on local and regional scales. I co-founded WildHub, a community of nature conservation professionals, in 2020 and work as their Community Lead. I am furthermore on the Advisory Board of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent where I obtained my PhD on capacity development for conservation in 2022.
Arvind Kumar Chaurasia
Additional Commissioner, IRS(C&IT), Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC)
I am Additional Commissioner from Indian Revenue Service (Customs & Indirect Taxes) with vast experience of law enforcement especially in tackling transnational smuggling including willdife trafficking. Also, as an expert I have been conducting sessions on various aspects of wildlife crimes and its convergence with other serious crimes, legal and enforcement framework to counter it, wildlife cyber crime, OSINT for combating wildlife crime, combating money laundering associated with wildlife crime, CITES, role of Customs in tackling the menace of wildlife crime, Digital Forensics etc. for forest, police, customs and other enforcement agencies' officials. I have also been invited as an expert by UNODC ROSA to train the law enforcement officials of Sri Lanka on combating wildlife cyber crimes.
I'm a field herpetologist and during the past half century have, along with similar-minded colleagues, set up several NGOs in India including Madras Snake Park, Centre for Herpetology/Madras Crocodile Bank, Irula Snake-catchers Cooperative Society, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Environmental Team, Irula Tribal Women's Welfare Society and Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. My current focus is a Centre for Herpetology/Madras Crocodile Bank project entitled "Snake Conservation and Snakebite Mitigation".
I help run a UK charity that builds the capacity of conservationists to plan, implement, monitor, and report on their work. I also have a fair bit of experience in tiger and sea turtle conservation.