'I spend most of my time crisis-solving for the [Indian] National Board of Wildlife or the Central Empowered Committee, a five-member committee that was appointed by the Supreme Court of India in 2002 to advise it on the misuse of forest lands.
When I'm on site, I'll stay in little forest rest-houses, which were constructed by the British before they left in 1947. You can find them every 10km or so. They're basic but they're in the heart of the parks. I get up at 6am and immediately hit the road in an open-air Jeep.
Just before the sun comes up is the best time to sight tigers. It's the coolest time and it's when they're most active. You drive around searching for any signs of a tiger. You're like a detective searching for clues such as pugmarks [footprints] on the road. You must listen carefully. Every animal has an alarm call when it sees a tiger: a spotted deer will give a high shriek while a bigger deer gives a grunting noise, so you must learn to recognise those calls.
I'll usually come back to the rest-house around 11am and have a late breakfast, an omelette and a piece of toast, or grab a sandwich and hit the road again. There is no plan scheduled but I try to pack as much into the day as possible. I may be looking for tigers or talking to the forest officers, trying to understand their problems: how much poaching is going on and any other offences.
Because the Central Empowered Committee reports directly to the Supreme Court, it is extremely powerful and the work we've achieved so far has been very satisfying. I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere. In one of our recent cases, we found the local administration had given farmers the right to use the land in a lovely bird reserve for fish farming. Within three months of our recommendation to ban the fishing, the fish farms were closed and the reserve was restored to its original state.
We've been given a court room at the Supreme Court in Delhi and I wear formal black dress. The Supreme Court refers cases to us to conduct hearings on and we then give a recommended judgment. So far 99.9 per cent of our recommendations have been accepted. We deal with cases related to forest lands so it includes everything: tigers, wildlife, fishing. Our job is to detect the problem, establish who has violated the law and bring it to the notice of the Supreme Court.