Neha Panchamiya

Panchamiya grew up in suburban Mumbai. She attended a Krishnamurti Foundation India boarding school in the Sahyadri hills near Bhimashankar, in the Junnar region, where leopards moved regularly through the surrounding landscape. She had wanted to train as a veterinarian but studied nutrition instead, and later completed a master's degree in the United Kingdom.

On moving to Pune, Panchamiya began responding to calls about injured street animals herself. At the age of 23 she started volunteering with a veterinarian who taught her the basics of rescue and first aid, and the work grew into RESQ Charitable Trust, founded in 2007.

RESQ works across four areas: wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, community animals, One Health work on zoonotic disease control and population management, and community education and outreach. It has treated animals of more than 230 species and by 2017 was handling more than 500 animals a month with four veterinarians and around 25 staff; the organisation later grew to a team of more than 85.

The trust operates Wildlife Transit Treatment Centres in Pune and Nashik and works with the Maharashtra Forest Department on wildlife emergencies and human-wildlife conflict. Panchamiya has said the organisation responds to over 9,000 wildlife emergencies a year across more than 250 species. She advocates vaccination and sterilisation programmes as a way of reducing conflict between people and free-roaming animals.[2][3][4]