Snehal Patel

Co-founder

Snehal Patel is the co-founder of Nature Club Surat (1984)[1], an Indian non-profit working on environment, animals and education from Surat.

Snehal Patel is an Indian mechanical engineer and conservationist who is a founder and the president of Nature Club Surat, a non-governmental organisation working on environmental conservation and wildlife protection in south Gujarat. He established the club in 1984 with two other nature enthusiasts and remains its managing trustee.

He is also known for the sustainable house he built on the outskirts of Surat, which draws its power from solar and wind and its water from rainwater harvesting, and which has been the subject of press coverage and a TEDxSurat talk.

Early life and education

Patel trained as a mechanical engineer, completing his engineering degree at Manipal in 1983.

Career

Patel founded Nature Club Surat in 1984, a year after finishing his engineering degree, together with two other founders. The club is a registered NGO with several hundred members that works with the Gujarat Forest Department and private bodies on environmental education, wildlife rescue and animal welfare, including veterinary camps and rescues after natural disasters. Its projects include wetland conservation at Gavier Lake in Surat, a spotted deer breeding and reintroduction programme at Vansda, and a vulture conservation programme begun in 2005 to support wild vulture populations in south Gujarat. The club has also documented bird calls, publishing the album Call of Indian Birds in 2003 and a further album in 2014.

In 1996 Patel bought a barren four-acre plot near Surat and began planting it; the site now carries some 700 trees of 70 varieties. He later built a two-storey house there of about 12,000 square feet, designed by the architect Falguni Desai, using timber salvaged from demolition sites and ship-breaking yards. The house runs on a 7.5 kW solar array and wind power, harvests and filters rainwater, recycles greywater for flushing, and is cooled by water-carrying pipes rather than air conditioning. By 2020 his family had lived there for eight years without paying water or electricity bills. He has spoken about the house and about sustainable living at TEDxSurat.[2][3][4][5]

Nature Club Surat

Working since 1985 from Athwalines, Nature Club Surat is south Gujarat's best-known environment education and wildlife rescue organization. Founded by Snehal Patel, its volunteers rescue crocodiles, otters, jungle cats and birds along the Tapi, run breeding and conservation projects with the forest department at Vansda National Park, campaign for migratory birds and sparrows, and take thousands of students on nature education camps.

Nature Club Surat reports the following, on its own site: