Wildlife science is a lot more than one can ever comprehend through television or movies. It is all about understanding the bigger picture of the interplay between nature and our society !

Zaara Kidwai, our next pathbreaker, CWD Regional Coordinator with the Department of Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks (Montana, USA), works on detecting Chronic Wasting Disease in Deer, Elk and Moose of the region.

Zaara talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about the sheer curiosity for nature that drove her to do a PhD in Wildlife Biology in South Africa where she studies the population trend of 27 ungulate species across 13 study sites in the province.

For students, the great things that we see on television about wildlife are extremely glamourized. If you are ready and willing to step outside of your comfort zone to handle the challenges on and off the field, this is the career for you !

Zaara, tell us what were your growing up years like?

I grew up in a small city of Uttar Pradesh called “Aligarh”. I belong to a middle class family with two older sisters. My father worked in a couple of private companies until he became the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Urdu University in 2014, and my mother is a homemaker and Urdu author with numerous published books. My oldest sister had an interest in math, so she took on the IT field, and is currently the Associate Director of Union Bank of Switzerland. My middle sister was interested in literature and journalism, so after her bachelor’s in English literature and Master’s in Mass communication, she completed her PhD in Women Studies and is currently working as Senior Content Writer in a private company, OnPassive.

I was brought up in a home that values education and believes in standing up on one’s own two feet without depending on anybody else for following one’s life choices. I was an active child who liked to draw, play games/video games and chase butterflies. Growing up, I participated in many painting, drama, singing, essay and debate competitions and won prizes. I am an extrovert and I always loved to volunteer for new experiences.

We used to visit my grandparent’s (mother’s side) house every summer vacation when we were kids. It is a beautiful village with a very different set up of things from the city we lived in, with the river, ponds, fields and animals. Even though I was super scared of all the animals there, I was curious to know about them, and I would get very excited on seeing something new, be it a bird or a butterfly or a deer. At that time, I would not have imagined to take the path I did. However, I knew it would have to do something with science and biology. My inclination at that time was towards becoming a doctor. However, I decided not to go in that direction after high school. 

What did you do for graduation/post graduation?

Growing up, I was very much interested in learning about nature, biology and ecology. So, I took biology after my high school and completed my bachelor’s degree with Zoology Honors. In my final year of the bachelor’s degree, I learned about the opportunity in my University to study Master’s in Wildlife Science. I found it intriguing and decided to pursue it, mainly because I was told that women are not generally participating in that course because of its physical requirements when working in the field. 

I am currently pursuing my doctoral degree with the University of South Africa in partnership with University of Witwatersrand.

What made you choose such an offbeat, unconventional and unusual career?

The sheer curiosity about the subject made me choose this field. However, I had no idea I would enjoy being in Wildlife Science as much as i did. As I said, women seldom pursue Wildlife Science as a career in my city. Hence, I was the only girl in my class and it made it a lot harder for me to study in my class in the first semester, mainly due to our Indian academic environment. I worked really hard to tough it out, even though I was told by my female lecturer that I should leave the course as girls cannot be in wildlife science. Somehow, all the negative energy towards me fueled me to prove them wrong. My classmates, after the first semester, realized they were not going to get rid of me, even after all their efforts, so they had no other option but to become my friends. It took me a while to ease up on them as well, since I had always studied in a “girls only” setting. I studied in a girl’s high school and a women’s college after that. This was the first time I was studying in a setting with boys alongside. In addition, the course did have physical requirements along with theoretical challenges, and I had to prove every single time that I deserved to be in that course. Knowing my physical abilities will always be lesser than the boys, I had to make extra efforts on the theoretical front. I did however graduate top of my class with a gold medal. 

My strengths throughout the course of my study were my mom and sisters. They were the ones who pushed me to complete the degree and face my fears. By the end of my studies, the department of wildlife science was like a second home to me and the boys in my class were the best friends I needed.

Tell us about your career path

In the Master’s degree program of the Department of Wildlife Science in Aligarh Muslim University, the full final semester involves completing a field internship with a wildlife institute. I wrote a lot of letters and emails but was unsuccessful in getting a project. While all my other classmates got their acceptance from great institutions, I was still waiting to get mine. I was almost selected for one of the projects, which was later cancelled due to some internal conflicts in the institution. After three months of searching, finally, with the help of one of my teachers, I got my chance to work with one of the best scientists in Wildlife Institute of India, in Sariska Tiger Reserve. That was my first break in entering the real world of wildlife population monitoring. While working on my own project, I assisted my seniors with their work too, and learned much more than I possibly could with only my project.

After completion of my first project in Sariska Tiger Reserve as a dissertation intern, I was hired as a Research Personnel in All India Tiger Monitoring project with Wildlife Institute of India along with 29 other researchers across India. I was posted in Kanha Tiger Reserve and my job duties included camera trapping, sign surveys and basically anything to do with animal surveys in the area. My species of interest were tiger, leopard, all the meso-carnivores and their prey species like deer and antelope.

I later got hired by WWF-India as Project officer where my primary duties were to assist in animal surveys and work with local communities around Rajaji Tiger Reserve and help them to procure alternate livelihood (making/selling candles, sewing dresses) so their dependency on forests decreases. I was also responsible for dealing with disbursing compensation to wildlife conflict affected households. Such cases included property destruction by wildlife and livestock or crop depredation by wildlife. I would also conduct sociological surveys across villages to understand their perception towards wildlife around them. This was done to mitigate any issues that could possibly arise such as poisoning of wildlife due to rage against killing of livestock.

In 2014, I was hired as the Social Scientist with Ranthambhore Tiger Conservation Foundation where I helped relocating villages from within the tiger reserve. Tiger reserves legally cannot have any villages inside them. However, unfortunately, when the tiger reserves were declared, they were already inhabited by local communities. In order to remove those communities, some laws were put into place. They were provided with compensation and sometimes land to re-establish themselves. The communities could not be removed forcefully, they need to leave voluntarily from the areas. This is why it was necessary to complete negotiations with the people concerned. It was a huge task to deal with and I tried my best to do justice with it. In my tenure with the foundation, I initiated relocation for 11 villages and created micro plans for their new establishment so they could get funding for alternate livelihood, and no longer depend on forests for their requirements.

I was not entirely happy with my position in Ranthambhore Tiger Conservation Foundation, mainly because it had more of the “human” and political factor than the “wildlife” factor that I wanted. I was looking for other opportunities overseas, when my husband received acceptance from University of Johannesburg (South Africa) as a Postdoctoral fellow and I travelled with him to a completely new world. I was so mesmerized with the wildlife there every time I would visit the field with my husband that I decided to enroll for a PhD in one of the institutes there. My PhD deals with the study of changes in population trend of Ungulates in the North West province of South Africa. I am studying the population trend of 27 ungulate species across 13 study sites in the province. My research question deals with finding the major environmental factors affecting spatial and temporal ungulate distributions in the North West province. If there is any place in the world a wildlife biologist should absolutely visit, it’s Africa. It is indeed a wildlife biologist’s heaven.

I was still in South Africa, when I was working on a manuscript to publish a scientific paper. After that paper was published, I received some interview calls from the United States for jobs I never applied. One of those jobs was from Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Working with the State of US was something I had always dreamed of. Since I had completed my two years of fieldwork with the University, I only needed to analyze my data and then start writing my thesis. I decided to pursue the job and my husband was extremely supportive for the decision. I came to the US and stayed with a roommate while working in Georgia state. I worked as a wildlife biologist in the position and did animal surveys, mitigation of conflict and outreach for environmental awareness. 

After one and half years in the job, my husband was finally able to join me and by then, I had received an offer from Arizona State with a much better opportunity. I was hired as a Landowner Relation Program Specialist. In this role, along with assisting on the wildlife surveys, I was creating habitats for wildlife recreational activities with the help of local landowners. Arizona Game and Fish Department accepted me as one of their own and I learned a million things in that job that I will always be thankful for. My supervisor and colleagues were extremely helpful and patient with me and till date we are in contact. I started looking for new opportunities when I felt that I had learned all there was to learn in that role, and it was time to move on.

How did you get your first break?

Getting my Master’s dissertation internship with one of the greatest wildlife institute’s in India surely helped me a lot to get started in the real world. I was selected in the All India Tiger Monitoring Project and was posted in Central India. After that, there was no stopping me. I kept applying for other jobs/projects and worked across West India, North India and central India for various positions/projects. 

Afterwards, I worked in South Africa for two and a half years and enrolled in their PhD program. Once I moved to the United States, I worked with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Arizona Game and Fish Department and Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks.

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?

Challenge 1: 

It is always challenging for women when they opt for something unconventional. My immediate family is extremely supportive for all decisions I have taken in my life, and opting for wildlife science was no exception. Every time I felt I was not good enough or I couldn’t get through the task, they would boost me back up and give me strength to go on and see it through.

Challenge 2: 

Since I have asthma, trekking and walking on a slope could be really challenging for me. I always carry my inhaler with me, though no one around me knew that I had a breathing issue. Sometimes, during a trek, my breath would get really loud which would embarrass me, but I would try my best to excuse myself, take my inhaler and then try again.

Challenge 3

There are a lot of challenges in this field and some are tougher than the others. It is all about how you deal with it at the time, in a remote area, with no cell network. All the great things that we see on television about wildlife are extremely glamorized, and they don’t show the things that happen in the field. Sometimes you have to wait hours for your target animal to come to the spot or do what you want it to do. Sometimes you don’t see the animal at all, even with the radio collar. Sometimes the challenge is having no work in the field but only paperwork. The challenges can be of any sort. What matters is for you to have an active state of mind for making a prompt decision.

Where do you work now? Tell us about your current role

I am currently working with the Department of Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks out of the Bozeman office in the Montana State, United States of America. I am working as the Regional Coordinator for detecting Chronic Wasting Disease in Deer, Elk and Moose of the region. To be in this position, one needs to learn the technique of removing lymph nodes from the throat of a hunted deer. I acquired the required training on the job, and currently supervise five technicians across the region who are stationed around different areas of the state. 

Chronic wasting disease (CWD), also called as “zombie” disease, is a transmissible brain disease that causes the brain to transform into sponge within a matter of weeks. The disease mainly affects deer and though it is not known to transmit to humans, it is crucial to keep a check on it to know which areas the disease has spread to.

What’s a typical day like?

As the season starts, the hunters start bringing their deer in order for us to take out and test their lymph nodes. We take around 15-20 deers a day per station. We have our separate kits to keep the samples and send them to the lab. The results are updated for the hunters to access and data analysis is completed every week to update the map on the website for showing the spread area of the disease.

When the season is over, I assist with wildlife surveys and any other tasks required around the department.

How does your work benefit society? 

CWD is a dangerous disease and even though there is no proof of it being transmitted to humans, it is not impossible. My work makes sure that we keep the spread of the disease in check. Every time a deer comes out positive, according to CDC guidelines, the meat is recommended to be disposed off, instead of being consumed. My work makes sure that the spread of the disease is contained and people don’t consume meat of an infected deer.

Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!

When I was working with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, I created a video for our team to be played at the Annual Employee Engagement Committee with more than 500 employees. The Deputy Director and the Regional Supervisor of the department were so impressed with my work and the video I created without any professional training,  that I was awarded employee of the year award within the Arizona Game and Fish Department in 2022.

Your advice to students based on your experience?

Wildlife science is a lot more than one can ever comprehend through television or movies. It has as much paperwork as fieldwork. Sometimes it is not as exciting as you would want, but you have to stay in the field for the bigger picture. Please do not join wildlife science just because you like pets. To be a wildlife biologist one needs to have the passion and willingness to work in a hot and humid environment on the one hand, and freezing cold/dry environment on the other. Wildlife science is not just about animals; it is about the environment as a whole. You learn so much about the environment around you in this field, by getting outside of your comfort zone with not enough compensation. You have to be really involved in order to be a part of this beautiful world. But once you have got the taste for it, you will never be satisfied with learning about it, and always want more.

Future Plans?

Things work out fine when I don’t plan. I do know I want to keep working in the field of wildlife science and cover other continents as well for learning about their environments.