Twenty-five years after the death (1994) of Kailash Sankhala, the former director of India’s Project Tiger, Oscar-winning filmmaker Ross Kauffman’s documentary Tigerland, revisits the late conservationist’s work through archival footage, animation and anecdotes from his grandson, Amit Sankhala, reports Scroll.in.
The film is about two pioneering conservationists: Kailash Sankhala and Pavel Fomenko, a tiger expert in Russia. Through Sankhala and Fomenko, Tigerland examines the importance of the big cat in India and Russia, the countries with the largest tiger populations in the world, adds the Scroll.in report.
While the activists are 50 years apart and worked in different time periods, both played key roles in reviving the tiger population in their countries.
The two-hour film was aired on Animal Planet on Monday.
Amit Sankhala also made interesting discoveries about his media shy grandfather during the course of making the documentary. One of them was a trip he took to Venezuela. “You would not expect someone to travel to Venezuela in the ’60s and ’70s for a tiger conference,” Amit told Scroll.in
“He visited many places to learn new techniques and voice his paper about the tiger population. I also learnt how political backing was very important for these projects. There were many people behind this core movement. Something like this is very hard to achieve today,” he added.
