Prerna Singh Bindra

Background

Prerna Singh Bindra

Prerna Singh Bindra is an economics graduate, and has a degree in Personnel Management and Labour Welfare. She started her career with Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad), as a Research Associate. She has also consulted with NGOs i.e the Friends of Women’s World Banking, where she assessed needs for micro financing for rural women, and helped streamline systems to make microfinance accessible.

Career

She began her career in journalism, born out of a passion for the wilds, with Sanctuary Asia. Later, she moved on to mainstream media, as she believed that the message needed to percolate to the common man, and to reach a larger audience. In a career spanning over a decade, she has worked with various publications including India Today, The Asian Age, The Pioneer, Tehelka and The Indian Express— penning well over a thousand articles on nature and wildlife. She has also written nature articles for children.  Prerna has done many investigative, undercover stories at times at considerable risk to life ie. exposed the illegal trade in shahtoosh in Jammu & Kashmir, the ivory trade in Gujarat and the elephant massacre in Satkosia in Orissa. She has travelled across forests in naxal control like Palamau and Saranda in Jharkhand, and Simlipal in Orissa, and remote forests such as Valmiki in Bihar.    She has written extensively on the  Terai, traversing through Uttarakhand-Uttar Pradesh-Bihar to understand and highlight man-animal conflict, poaching concerns, rehabilitation of villages from critical tiger habitats and other issues in protected areas in the Terai. She has also focussed on lesser known endangered species. Her canvas also includes writing on deforestation, impact of power plants, mines and other mega-projects on ecology and livelihood. Her writing has also effected policy change.  

She currently is a freelance journalist, and is the Editor of Tigerlink, a journal which collates and analyses information on the tiger from across its range countries. She also occasionally volunteers for NGOs, essentially pitching in campaigns or driving media attention to focus on critical conservation issues. She is also currently working with the Ministry of Tourism to help work out strategies to help alleviate the negative impacts of tourism on wildlife. She is currently also involved with the NDTV Save the Tiger campaign as representing Sanctuary Asia who are the knowledge partners. 

She is committed to raise the bar for environment journalists, and has helped organise media workshops. She has spoken at various seminars, conferences, colleges and schools.  She is guest faculty at an International Course on Awareness as a tool for Conservation organised by Satpuda Foundation in collaboration with Environment Education and Conservation Global. And also for the journalism school of Centre for Media Studies. 

Awards

She has won the Carl Zeiss Award for excellence in networking and engaging the public at large for the cause of wildlife conservation, as well as the Sanctuary Asia Wildlife Service award for in-depth and consistent coverage of conservation issues.

 Book

She has authored a well-received book, a conservation-based travelogue The King and I:Travels in Tigerland, published by Rupa in 2006.