What is the language of love that mahouts use to communicate with their elephants? How deep is the ecological wisdom of forest women, preserved through oral traditions and folklore?
These questions drive the work of ORA India Fellow Dr. Nandini Velho—a scientist, field biologist, and conservationist whose research lives at the intersection of the biophysical, the social, and the cultural. Over the years, Nandini has worked alongside artists, storytellers, illustrators, and local historians to help communities engage deeply with their forests, to reclaim them as living spaces of connection and well-being.
At last year’s ORA Ideas Festival, her exhibit Storytellers of the Forest brought these ideas to life through a trilingual video, photographs, and illustrations. The installation captured the intimate relationship between camp elephants and their mahouts (video below), and highlighted four women whose stories weave together gender, ecology, and emotion—illuminating how personal culture becomes a vessel of conservation.
For Nandini, conservation is not only about protecting ecosystems, it’s about transforming our relationship with them. Her work spans many themes, from rainforest dynamics and the impacts of malaria on forest management to the social and emotional fabrics that bind people to their land. By bridging science, governance, and lived experience, she has facilitated collaborations between conservation scientists, local forest managers, and Indigenous communities, ensuring solutions are both grounded in science and guided by local wisdom.
In 2023–24, Nandini founded The Canopy Collective, an inclusive space for storytelling on conservation in India. Designed as a platform for collaboration, partnership, and creative experimentation, it brings together scientists, young filmmakers from grassroots communities, and forest managers to reimagine how conservation stories are told.
Through collaborations with Green Hub and Youth4Forest, the 21-member collective has already engaged more than 200 young Indigenous people, scientists, artists, musicians, and media practitioners, nurturing a new generation of ethical conservation leaders working toward a biodiversity-friendly future.
The Canopy Collective also partners with forest departments and local communities to co-create Interpretation Centres (living repositories of local knowledge) and to train researchers to translate science into action through design, psychology, music, and storytelling.
Nandini’s work reminds us that conservation is not a solitary act of protection but a shared act of participation—a story we are all invited to tell.
Learn more about Nandini Velho’s work and the Canopy Collective here.
