Vinod Rishi rose from field postings in West Bengal to some of India’s most senior wildlife positions, including serving as the first director of Project Elephant.Trained as an engineer, he brought a practical, evidence-based approach to conservation, testing official claims and scientific methods against conditions on the ground.His work helped shift wildlife management beyond individual protected areas toward broader landscapes, particularly elephant habitats, migration corridors, and conflict-prone regions.Colleagues remembered him as humble, determined, and collaborative, while his later writing revealed a close attention to individual animals and the places they inhabited.
A tiger once put its head beside a passenger in Vinod Rishi’s jeep. Its face, he wrote years later, wore a “quizzical expression.” Then it moved away, leaving the men unharmed. Rishi called it “a King with a big heart.” Decades after the encounter, he could still recall the position of the tiger’s head and the look on its face.
Rishi, who died in Dehradun on July 29, held some of the highest positions in Indian wildlife administration. He was the first director of Project Elephant, additional director general of forests for wildlife, and director of the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy. During 38 years in the Indian Forest Service, he worked in the Sundarbans and Buxa tiger reserves, Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary, and the national parks of Singalila and Neora Valley.
