We love every minute of creating and curating Youth for Nature and are usually sneaking around behind the scenes. Come get to know us!
Priya Ranganathan, Founder and Co-Editor
Priya is a PhD student at ATREE, Bangalore, studying wetland ecosystems. She is a geologist, ecologist, Bharatanatyam dancer, and writer who adores the wildlife and forests of the Western Ghats. She grew up in many places around the world – Mumbai, Chennai, Pittsburgh (USA), and she now studies and works in Bangalore. Youth for Nature was born one rainy night during the coronavirus lockdown when Priya was bored and wanted to come up with a way to communicate her love for nature to children of all ages (yes, even adults can be children at heart). She decided to test the first iteration of the magazine on her hoard of small cousins…and to her delight, they loved it!
When she is not busy working on the next issue of Youth for Nature or collecting data on wetlands across India, Priya can be found dancing, conducting creative writing workshops, writing children’s picture books, and reading anything and everything related to wildlife. She loves interacting with children and her favourite wild animal is the leopard. She loves to travel by train and go on long treks in the forest and mountains.
Nikita Bhat, Co-Editor
Nikita is an environmentalist from Bangalore, currently working in Canada and is particularly interested in issues of environmental justice and building resilience in social-ecological systems. She officially joined Youth for Nature in February 2021 when a casual chat with her friend Priya, founder of the magazine, unexpectedly turned into a brainstorm session resulting in ambitious ideas and the realization that joining forces to continue the development of the magazine could lead to many wonderful things.
Nikita is often dreaming of warm, sunny days while she thaws from the frigid Canadian winter and keeps her spirits up by experimenting with vegan recipes, doting on her indoor plants and attempting (but often not completing) various crafty projects like embroidering, needle felting and rug hooking. She is always looking forward to hiking, camping and travelling to far and distant lands.
Sankaranarayanan R, Social Media Manager
Sankar is a Master’s student at ATREE x TDU, Bengaluru pursuing Environmental Studies (Conservation Practice). He is from Chennai but is currently living in Bengaluru. His interests lie in topics such as Human-Wildlife interactions, ecology (he is still trying to figure out which discipline in ecology), and lately in aquatic macroinvertebrates. When Priya was casually talking to him about YFN needing a social media manager, he just asked her if he can volunteer and voila! He officially joined Youth For Nature in January 2022 and has been managing the Instagram, the YouTube Channel and occasionally the website too. You can see him around with his camera sometimes. His only request to all the people who read this is to follow the magazine on Instagram and subscribe to the YouTube channel 🙂
Youth for Nature 