Dr. Vinod B. Mathur, joined the Indian Forest Service in 1983 and was allotted to West Bengal Cadre. He obtained his doctorate degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Oxford in 1991. As a faculty member and now Director of the Wildlife Institute of India, he has been actively involved in conducting training and research in the field of natural resource conservation for the last three decades His areas of specialization are Protected Area Management, Environmental Assessment, Biodiversity Mainstreaming and Natural Heritage Conservation. He has also worked as a FAO International Training and Protected Area Planning Consultant in Sri Lanka. He has been responsible for the planning, organization and conduct of training programs for various target groups. Dr. Mathur also has vast experience of conducting environmental assessments and developing mitigation plans for safeguarding critical biodiversity resources. He has been a member of the Environmental Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the Government of India for the Coal and Thermal power and Mining projects. He is the Regional Vice Chair, the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA)-South Asia and member of the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM). Dr. Mathur is a member of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) and has co-presented the IAIA's training courses in Boston (USA), Stavanger (Norway), Seoul (Korea), Perth (Australia), Accra (Ghana), Geneva (Switzerland), Puebla (Mexico), Porto (Portugal), Calgary (Canada), Florence (Italy) and Washington D.C. (USA). He has also been the member of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Multidisciplinary Expert Panel (MEP) and the Regional Vice Chair of IPBES MEP (Asia Pacific Region).