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.