Bharathidasan Subbaiah

Bharathidasan has been active in the conservation movement since 1992. He began as an environmental journalist, and later worked as an advocate for renewable energy and as a technical adviser at a government botanical nursery. He has written several books on the environment in Tamil and contributes regularly to wildlife and environmental magazines.

Arulagam was founded in 2002 and named in memory of Arulmozhi, a friend of the founders whose commitment to environmental conservation inspired them. From 2009 the organisation received a series of grants from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, which supported a programme to protect vultures in Tamil Nadu. Bharathidasan turned his own attention primarily to vultures in 2011.

Vulture numbers in India collapsed after the veterinary use of the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac, which is fatal to birds that feed on the carcasses of treated livestock; populations of Gyps vultures fell by more than 95 per cent. Arulagam's work has aimed at removing diclofenac from the birds' food chain, promoting the safe alternative meloxicam, and running workshops for cattle owners, veterinarians and pharmacists. The organisation has also worked with the Tamil Nadu Forest Department on leaving carcasses available as vulture food, developed teaching materials and games for schoolchildren, and taken part in efforts to establish a vulture safe zone across the Mysore–Nilgiri–Sathyamangalam landscape under a project called Right to Soar High Again. Bharathidasan was appointed to the Tamil Nadu committee for the State Action Plan for Vulture Conservation, and presented on stakeholder engagement for vulture safe zones at the national conference on vulture conservation held in Ahmedabad in September 2024.

In 2016 the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund named Bharathidasan one of fifteen Biodiversity Hotspot Heroes, representing the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka hotspot. The award was presented at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii.[2][3][4][5][6]