Ashok spent most of his spare time during his working career with TATA Steel in the forests of eastern India. He was responsible for 'discovering' the herd of elephants at Dalma and getting it declared as a wildlife sanctuary. He also helped establish the Eastern Region office of WWF-India by giving them a place in the TATA office, and served as the Honorary Secretary of the Calcutta Zoo. His sojourns in the terai became more and more frequent and he soon abandoned the shikar camps organized by his brother-in-law to turn conservationist. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction on the terai of that period, which have been brought together in the beautiful little book ‘Tigers of North Kheri'.
When he left TATA and accepted a job in the Middle East, he channeled his love for wildlife into tracking the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn in Dubai. He alerted the CITES Secretariat to the trade and paved the way for the first undercover operations in Yemen on the rhino horn trade. Back in India in the early 90s,Ashok was a consultant in the Ministry of Environment and Forest which also meant that he was Member Secretary of the committee that set up the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau.
The Founder Director of TRAFFIC India, he established a lifelong partnership with Vivek Menon that resulted in the first and largest tiger bone seizure in India, the netting of the infamous tiger-parts trader Sansar Chand and landmark trade control work on subjects as varied as elephant ivory, mongoose hair brushes, agarwood and rhino horn. His sharp mind and penchant for litigation meant that several landmark cases were won including those against the fur traders of India, the ivory traders of India, banning shahtoosh in Jammu and Kashmir and various criminal cases against wildlife traffickers and poachers. Traders like Sansar Chand and Pema Yakub were pursued with as much seriousness as celebrity hunters like Salman Khan and Mansur Ali Pataudi.
Ashok left TRAFFIC-India, and set up the Wildlife Protection Society of India with Belinda Wright in 1994, where he continued pursuing his trade control interests, focusing on tiger and Tibetan antelope conservation. In 1998, he joined Vivek Menon and two other eminent conservationists, Tara Gandhi and Thomas Mathew, to set up the Wildlife Trust of India.
In 2013, when asked by Sanctuary Editor Bittu Sahgal if he had any regrets, Kumar said, "Not one. Wildlife has given me so much - besides the deep satisfaction I get from what I do. I have travelled to the remotest parts of this world, seen the rarest creatures... would I have done that as an executive in a steel company? I doubt it."
Till his last days, Ashok Kumar served as the Chairman Emeritus of the Wildlife Trust of India. Says Vivek Menon of his long-time colleague and mentor, “ Ashok was a friend, mentor and karmic guru for me for over 30 years. His single minded focus to fight wildlife crime in India was pioneering. He taught me, as he did a hundred younger conservationists, the virtues of tenacity and grit in conservation battles." Ashok Kumar was an extraordinary man, who inspired generations of conservationists. We bid him adieu with a heavy heart.
Read more on the legend -Â Â
Guardians Of Tomorrow - The Sanctuary Wildlife Awards 2015
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