Mrunal Ghosalkar
Programme Head
Mrunal completed her Masters in Environmental Science from Institute of Science, Fort, Mumbai. She is involved in community engagement and educational activities in the GIB program in Rajasthan. In her past experiences, she had been associated with various organizations working with people and communities through different ways of people engagements. She is a National Geographic certified educator. She was involved in conducting occupancy surveys to get the ecological information of Hornbills in North Eastern states of India with the Nature Conservation Foundation. She was a part of Ovitla Landga project with Maharashtra Forest Department, where she was working with Dhangar community – one of the largest pastoral communities in India to understand the conflicts over fodder and resources in Mayureshwar Wildlife Sanctuary. She was leading the Janata Waghoba - the wise big cat program in collaboration with WCS-India, Maharashtra Forest Department and Rufford Foundation. The program was aimed at sharing information on human-leopard interactions with people through various innovative ways and stakeholder engagement from the rural landscapes of Maharashtra. The highlight of the program was involvement of the students who were known as Leopard Ambassadors in working towards creating awareness in their own villages. She has also been working with the Centre for Wildlife Studies as a Project Coordinator for Wild Shaale Conservation education program.
She has a keen interest in understanding and implementing various communication approaches in conservation programs through interdisciplinary approaches on a ground level with different stakeholders.