It is with great sadness that we inform you of the sudden and untimely passing away of our Scientific Advisor, Dr. Ajith Kumar while he was on a field trip with his students.
Ajith was a very good and dependable friend of our founder, Rishad Naoroji who brought him on board to serve as our first scientific advisor. Ajith was a PhD from Cambridge University and served as faculty at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun and the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), Coimbatore. Ajith Kumar taught and mentored many students at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru. He was one of the foremost bio-statisticians in the country and helped in analysing the raptor data collected by Rishad Naoroji. Ajith was very practical in his approach and we always looked for his guidance during the early years of Raptor Research and Conservation Foundation (RRCF) and continued to do so.
I was in regular touch with Ajith Kumar consulting him on various projects undertaken by the Foundation. He often proffered that the more common raptors should first be studied rather than tackling the more difficult and rarer species! He was well known in scientific circles with his work on smaller mammals and was constantly traveling to field sites within the country. Ajith was instrumental in creating the Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference (IWEC 2024), which held its first symposium in Bengaluru last year. It was in this conference that he kept a separate slot for us to hold, which is probably the first session devoted solely to Indian raptors. RRCF will sorely miss Dr. Ajith Kumar. The Board conveys their deepest condolences to his family!