Geeta Seshamani

Geeta Seshamani is an Indian animal welfare campaigner who co-founded Wildlife SOS in 1995 with Kartick Satyanarayan, and is best known for the campaign that ended the centuries-old practice of making sloth bears dance for money in India while also rehabilitating the community that depended on it.

Seshamani had been working in animal welfare since 1979 with Friendicoes SECA, the Delhi organisation of which she remains vice-president. When Wildlife SOS was started, out of a small garage in Delhi, she deliberately set it up as an extension of Friendicoes so that the two could share knowledge and resources through the lean early years when there was little money or support.

Between 1995 and 1997 she and Satyanarayan investigated the dancing bear trade, visiting some 68 villages of the Kalandar community, the nomadic group that had practised it since the Mughal period, in order to understand the economics that kept it alive. Their report to the Government of India, circulated internationally, led to the establishment of sloth bear rescue and rehabilitation centres. The first bear, Rani, was taken in during 2002; the last, surrendered by his Kalandar handlers in 2009, brought the practice to an end. In all 628 bears were rescued into four large sanctuaries. Because the campaign rested on removing the community's livelihood, it was paired with a rehabilitation programme: more than 5,000 Kalandar families were given seed capital and support to start other work, women were trained and helped to find markets for what they made, and more than 17,000 Kalandar children were enrolled in school with supplies provided to keep them there.

Wildlife SOS has since grown from a two-person operation into the largest wildlife rescue organisation in India, running twelve rescue centres and extending the same rescue-and-rehabilitation model to captive elephants, leopards and reptiles, with registered branches in the United States from 2005 and the United Kingdom from 2009. Seshamani has served on the Animal Welfare Board of India and the Central Zoo Authority.[2][3][4]