Rishi Kumar Sharma

About

Rishi Sharma is Head of the Himalayas Program at WWF-India, where he leads conservation science, applied research, and field-based conservation programmes across the Indian Himalayan region. Over more than two decades, his work has focused on high-altitude biodiversity conservation, large carnivore ecology, rangeland and pastoral systems, and the relationship between ecological processes and human societies in mountain landscapes.

A defining feature of his work is the integration of ecological and social science approaches to address complex conservation challenges. His research has engaged with questions of human–wildlife coexistence, conservation governance, community-conserved areas, pastoralism in transition, traditional ecological knowledge, and the role of culture and gender in shaping conservation outcomes across Himalayan societies.

Sharma has led landscape- and population-level assessments of threatened wildlife using advanced ecological and statistical approaches, including spatially explicit capture–recapture methods for snow leopard population monitoring in India. His work spans the Trans-Himalaya, Western Himalaya, Eastern Himalaya, and the Eastern Himalayan landscapes of Arunachal Pradesh, and combines applied conservation practice with interdisciplinary research relevant to policy and management.

He collaborates with national and international academic, government, and conservation institutions on interdisciplinary research and conservation initiatives spanning carnivore conservation, socio-ecological systems, community-based conservation, and conservation governance. His methodological interests include wildlife population ecology, occupancy modelling, Bayesian approaches to ecological monitoring, species distribution modelling, and interdisciplinary socio-ecological research integrating ecological and social science methods.

Employment

• WWF-India Head, Himalayas Program

Education

• Wildlife Institute of India
• Nature Conservation Foundation

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications (10)

• Past shadows and gender roles: Human elephant relations and conservation in Southern India
  Journal of Political Ecology 2024 DOI: 10.2458/jpe.2834
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• Comments on “Spatial Utilization and Microhabitat Selection of the Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) under Different Livestock Grazing Intensities”
  Earth Interactions 2022 DOI: 10.1175/EI-D-22-0007.1
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• Spatial variation in population-density of snow leopards in a multiple use landscape in Spiti Valley, Trans-Himalaya
  PLOS ONE 2021 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250900
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• The role of traditional belief systems in conserving biological diversity in the Eastern Himalaya Eco-region of India
  Human Dimensions of Wildlife 2021 DOI: 10.1080/10871209.2020.1781982
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• Spatial variation in population-density, movement and detectability of snow leopards in a multiple use landscape in Spiti Valley, Trans-Himalaya
  2020 DOI: 10.1101/2020.09.09.289181
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• Does livestock benefit or harm snow leopards?
  Biological Conservation 2015 DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2015.04.026
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• Pastoralism in Transition: Livestock Abundance and Herd Composition in Spiti, Trans-Himalaya
  Hum Ecol 2015 DOI: 10.1007/s10745-015-9789-2
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• Conflating "co-occurrence" with "coexistence"
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1217001110
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• Monitoring tiger populations using intensive search in a capture–recapture framework
  Popul Ecol 2010 DOI: 10.1007/s10144-010-0230-9
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• Evaluating capture-recapture population and density estimation of tigers in a population with known parameters
  Animal Conservation 2010 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-1795.2009.00305.x
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