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Dr. M. Soubadra Devy started her career studying biodiversity and species interactions in the tall canopies of wet evergreen forests of the Southern Western Ghats. This pioneering effort won her the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding exploration from the Rolex-Explorers’ Club in 2006. Later, recognizing that critical conservation issues lie outside protected areas, she, along with her students, initiated work on the sustenance of biodiversity and pollination services in `nature and agriculture’ coupled systems in human-dominated spaces ranging from tea-forest scapes, orange-forest fragments, Chayote squash-urban national park, to urban agriculture. Her approach to research is interdisciplinary, leading her to work in collaboration with economists, sociologists and community leaders. Currently, her research is focused on reimaging green spaces in cities to foster pollinators and biodiversity. Her recent interest is in the eco-restoration of lake shores and riparian vegetation of rivers, recognising that these are important zones that serve as biodiversity refugia. Restoring them is as important as improving water quality, particularly in a human-dominated matrix. She is currently involved in the restoration of Venkateshpura Lake in North Bangalore and the riparian area of River Tamiraparani in South Tamil Nadu. She still retains her passion for evolutionary and ecological work in unexplored areas, such as the pollination ecology of Rhododendrons, and often makes forays into the canopy when opportunities arise.
