Meet the couple that creates wildlife sanctuary in India
These are the husband and wife that spent 25 years buying up wasteland that farmers no longer wanted and transforming it, so that elephants, tigers and leopards can roam free.
Anil and Pamela Malhotra met and married in the US in 1960s. They moved to India in 1986 after a visit for the funeral of Anil’s father. They wanted to move to India, because the state of the nature in Haridwar was terrible and they wanted to change it. There was so much deforestation, the timber lobby was in charge, and the river was polluted. And no one seemed to care. That was when we decided to do something to reclaim the forests in India,” Anil told the India Times.
In 1991, they purchased a 55-acre plot down south in Brahmagiri, a mountain range in the Western Ghats. The land was such a mess that the owner couldn’t grow anything on it, so he wanted to sell it. “For me and Pamela, this was what we were looking for all our life,” Anil said. This way, the transformation, carefully orchestrated by Mother Nature, began and evolved into what is now called the Save Animal Initiative Sanctuary, according to Tree Hugger.
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The couple has been purchasing land stripped of its fertility ever since. “Once we bought the land, we allowed the forest to regenerate. We planted native species where necessary and allowed nature to take care of the rest,” Anil said.
The Save Animal Initiative Sanctuary has around 300 acres of beautiful bio-diverse rainforest that offers shelter to elephants, tigers, leopards, deer, snakes, birds and hundreds of other animals. Guests are invited to stay in the two eco-tourist cottages on the property as a way to sustain the efforts of the couple.
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