Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.He rebuilt a species from 66 individuals. And he still says he's never been happy seeing a tiger in a cage. This is what 30+ years inside India's forest service actually looks like.Dr Sanjay Kumar Shukla, IFS, former Field Director of Kanha Tiger Reserve and Member Secretary of the Central Zoo Authority of India, joins Some Like It Wild for a conversation that goes everywhere the system doesn't usually let you look.He talks about the accident that put him in the forest service in the first place — a customs posting he'd already accepted, and a result that arrived on the same day. He walks through the near-extinction and recovery of the hard-ground Barasingha in Kanha — from 3,000 in 1938 down to just 66 by the 1970s, and back to over 1,000 today. He explains why the Blackbuck reintroduction in Kanha didn't work, and admits it plainly: it was driven more by emotion than science.Then the conversation turns to the questions people are actually arguing about right now — the surge in tiger and leopard deaths in Madhya Pradesh in 2026, whether tourism is measurably stressing tigers according to a recent CSIR study, and Vantara: what it legally is, how animals like 80 hippos from Colombia and rescued big cats from Mexico ended up there, and why the man who helped regulate it still isn't sure capturing conflict leopards is the right call.This is a rare first-hand account from someone who was inside the room for most of it not analysis from the outside.In associtation : @DholesDenBandipur #SomeLikeItWild #ForestConservation #EcologicalRestoration #vantara #saveourforests [Vantara Jamnagar truth ex CZA Member Secretary Vantara animal numbers cheetah leopard elephant Central Zoo Authority private zoo regulations India Kuno National Park cheetah vs Vantara captive cheetahs Madhya Pradesh tiger deaths wildlife poaching syndicate Barasingha conservation history Kanha National Park Are solar waterholes bad for forest ecology Spix Macaw extinction reintroduction Vantara Germany Wildlife Crime Control Bureau leopard skin seizure MP Some Like It Wild podcast Rohit Varma Nature inFocus Some like it wild] ------------------- ABOUTWelcome to Some Like It Wild—the podcast that takes you deep into the untold stories of India’s legendary wildlife champions. What drives someone to chase cobras through the Western Ghats? Or spend years tracking big cats? What pivotal moments led them to choose a career in the wild, especially in an era when conservation was barely a conversation? In each episode, we sit down with scientists, filmmakers, conservationists, and more to hear their unfiltered stories—their struggles, triumphs, and the raw, untold moments that defined their journeys. From near-misses with predators to the evolving challenges of protecting India's biodiversity, this is the story of those legends you've never heard.