Dr. A. J. T. Johnsingh grew up near the forests around the Western Ghats, swimming, hunting and fishing. He saw his first leopard three metres away, as a child. He devoured the stories of Jim Corbett in Tamil translation at a local library, and was hooked. Since then, he has had a long and eminent career in wildlife biology, publishing the first full length study of the wild dogs of India, dholes. In the forests of the Himalayan foothills he has tracked tigers and elephants, observing individual animals over many months. He has waited atop swaying trees, as still as they would allow, observing goral feeding below. He has returned to all the places Jim Corbett wrote of in his famous stories of man-eating tigers and documented the changes.
The essays in this book convey the beauty and thrill of Indian forests and their wildlife to the non-specialist. Dr Johnsingh takes us for walks in the jungle with him, and we see through his trained eyes what we would never otherwise look for. In each essay he tracks a different animal and tells us not only of his experiences, but also of the habits, biology and current condition of the species he is discussing. The essays are at once a celebration of India's wilderness and a passionate–and informed–cry for us to save it before it is too late.
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