Hi, I am a Biological Anthropologist working as researcher with Howard University, Washington DC, USA, and National Institute of Advanced Studies, India. Having grown up in a remote village of the Indian Himalayas, I have developed a profound understanding of the Himalayan landscape, local communities, culture, and traditional knowledge. It is a well-known fact that habitat loss, due to anthropogenic activity, is a key factor driving the decline of many wildlife across the globe. I believe conservation of such species is possible only with the coexistence of people and wildlife. I have successfully established my long-term research site and intensively studied the Himalayan Langur (Semnopithecus schistaceus) in the western Himalayas, Uttarakhand India. In the past seven years of my field research in the higher Himalayas, I strived towards developing a multidisciplinary approach as a means to identify and predict the critical factors driving distinct threats to biodiversity as well as to local communities. This helped me devise a one-of-a-kind paradigm for animal-human coexistence using primates (Himalayan Langur, which is a virtually unknown species) as a model since they are the ideal species for behavior studies. Based on my research, I have already started the mitigation practices to facilitate the coexistence of locals and wild animals.
Latest news
Conservationist of the Year Award by We Naturalists

Latest project: Assessment of a multidisciplinary framework for human–wildlife coexistence. Funded by Rufford Small Grant, UK.


Contact Details Dr. Himani Nautiyal Email: [email protected] Rui Diogo Lab, Washington DC, USA ResearchGate profile Google Scholar profile National Geographic profile |