TIGER WOMAN

HAMINA KANG

When she is not painting wildlife, this lady is in Ranthambhore National Park, involved in various projects to save our national animal—the tiger. Chandigarh-based Hamina Kang, 46, a tiger conservationist who also heads the Earth Heart Conservation Trust, believes that individual efforts and not dependency on the government will be instrumental in saving the big cat. “Look at the kind of work different NGOs are doing to save the tiger. The government doesn’t really have a great track record as far as saving the big cat is concerned,” says Kang, a graduate of Chandigarh College of Art. She says she had been attracted towards conservation of wildlife ever since she was a teenager, but the idea took concrete shape only when she shifted to the US in the 1990s. “That’s when I joined different wildlife organisations and adopted two tigers. I also acquainted myself with how one could go about saving the tiger through the legal processes in different countries,” she says. Kang, who considers conversationalist Billy Arjan Singh as her mentor, came back to India in the year 2005 and bought several acres of land near Ranthambhore. She plans to shift there permanently very soon. “That would help smoothen operations of my trust,” she says. The conservationist, who is also a member of the Mogiya Reform Project elaborates, “Mogiya is a tribe of poachers around Ranthambhore. We educate the next generation in order