Youth supports wild for a better future.

Photo credits:RAWW

Author: Pawan Sharma

Adwait Jadhav (Member - RAWW Resqink Association for Wildlife Welfare)  with Jeet Gunaji Sawardekar ( Student of class VI - Hiranandani Foundation Thane , and a resident of Hiranandani Meadows Thane)


Jeet is an example of the young ones of our country who will be spreading a word for wildlife conservation in the near future and support the only minority of the country ie the wildlife and its habitat.
Our team had visited Jeet's residence for few days last year when there was a distress at his complex (Hiranandani Meadows) regarding a wildlife distress situation. Where a leopard was frequently visiting the area and hunting dogs due to which there was a fear among the residents that the leopard could attack small children mistaking them for a easy prey and lead to a human-wildlife conflict.
As a part of human wildlife conflict management the leopard was trapped by the forest department but the impact of the wild cat was still in the mind of the young child.
As a part of his academic proceedings Jeet had participated in a Homi Baba initiative where 40,000 students  of English, Hindi and Marathi mediums from the state had taken part. Students were told to choose different topics and conduct a survey on the same and submit a report of the same. Jeet decided to choose leopards of SGNP( Sanjay Gandhi National Park) as his topic and soon exchanged his ideas with his father.
Mr. Sawardekar (Jeet's father) recollected our interaction with them during the leopard distress situation where we had helped many residents by making them aware about the behavior of the wild cat and ways to deal with them, so he soon approached Adwait Jadhav of our organization for helping and guiding his child in the topic he selected. As the mentor for Jeet, Adwait helped him in the best possible ways with his technical guidance and expertise gained while working with forest department and dealing with human leopard distress situations.
Adwait is a student of science and his procuring his masters degree in environmental science from Institute of science affiliated with University of Mumbai and is currently working on human-leopard conflict as a part of his academics. Adwait helped Jeet in designing the survey questionnaire and gave tips on compiling data while representing the report and also different ideas to make more ad more people aware about the leopard, its behavior and importance in our forests.
Few weeks ago we had a call from Jeet's father that he won a silver medal with a lot of applause and appreciation from his near and dear ones including his school and the hosts of the initiative. This was not only a good news but also the positive impact of raising such contemporary issues on academic level. We hope that youngsters keep coming forward and undertake such initiatives and represent the wildlife on every available platform that one gets, this will not only lead to welfare of wildlife but also to the welfare of human kind as co existence with the wild is the only key to live a better and sorted life.