(dramatic music) - Welcome to A Shot of Ag.

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led into an XM Radio Show, which led into a national television show, which led into me being right here today.

But today, today is not about me, today is about Anant Deshwal.

Deshwal, how're you doing an Anant?

- I'm doing good, how are you doing?

- Good, this is part two.

- Yes.

- Because your first interview last week was so fascinating.

Yeah, we just had to do more.

- Thank you.

(Anant laughing) - Let me do a quick recap, right?

You grew up in India, incredible sacrifices by your parents.

You got a degree in engineering, and then you got a job with that for six months, and then your boss yelled at you, and then you stormed a conservation place without permission, with a ladder, and you got, and you end up, that's where kind of where we left.

And then we brought out a snake and we started talking about armadillos.

- Yeah.

(Anant laughing) - That's episode one, if anybody wants to go, yeah.

So you did, you had a dream and a passion.

You wanted to work conservation animals that, so you get your way in.

- Yeah.

- So what is your first position with that?

- So my first position was with Center for Wildlife Studies and we were serving for tigers.

So we would head out every morning in national parks, and count how many tigers are there.

And we would also count how many deer, antelopes, and Indian bison are over there, the prey for the tigers.

- Were they tracked or how'd you find them?

- Some of them were had collars on them that you could track.

But what we were mainly doing was, actually tigers love dry river beds with lots of trees around.

- Okay.

- And we would be doing, we would be surveying those dry river beds on foot.

And the closest I saw a tiger, my first tiger, which was nine feet away from me, I was on foot.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- They're huge, aren't they?

- They are, they are huge.

- How much they weigh?

- I can't remember that.

- Like enough to eat you.

- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, I would be a.. - That does not sound safe to be nine foot away from a man eater.

- So depending where you are in India, your encounter with tiger would be very different.

I was in Southern part of the country.

It's hilly, and the tigers over there are shy.

So the tiger saw me.

- Yeah.

- And it ran away.

- Okay.

- If I was in Northern part of India, it would be a whole different story.

- Oh those Northern tigers.

- Yeah.

- That's the rough part.

- That's the rough part.

- Really, so really is it like the Northern ones, they're out to just eat anything?

- No, they're not out to eat.

They are, it's plane over there, so they're more used to humans, so their behavior is more unpredictable.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- So you got this job, you're getting nine foot in front of a tiger.

I mean, you worked a lot to get here.

Was this, were you happy?

- I was, I wanted to take photograph of the tiger.

- Yeah.

- And so the tiger ran.

Me and my friend, another fellow who was working with me, we could not get our cameras out in time.

- Yeah.

- Believe it or not, we ran after the tiger to get the photograph.

- That's a great idea.

(Anant laughing) Could you, this friend of yours, this friend, could you outrun him?

- Yes.

- Okay, you were safe then?

- Yes.

(both laughing) - Okay, did you catch him?

- No, we didn't get the photograph, tigers are way too quick.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, okay.

- It was gone.

- So what were you doing with all the information?

- Our idea was to work on conservation of national parks and how big a national park should be, And how much of, how many tigers can it support.

- Yeah.

- So we were identifying what kind of habitats are best for tigers, how many tigers it can support.

And we were doing the tigers surveys.

And using that to inform the Ministry of Forestry.

- Okay.

- And coming up with habitat management plants.

- I don't even know, I probably should.

Are tigers endangered?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Yeah, they're critically endangered.

The numbers were dropping rapidly, but now it's kind of starting to stabilize a bit.

- Is it just 'cause too many people around?

- At one point they were finding there was too much of hunting going on, but now it's stabilizing because of all the, like what we were doing with tigers, similar work is still continuing, and that is leading to more awareness.

- Okay, they don't eat 'em, do they?

- No.

- For the hunting, what are they doing with 'em, just for a trophy?

- For trophy hunting.

- Gotcha.

- That's what was happening way back in time.

Right around the time when India got its freedom, and even before it got its freedom, so yeah.

- Okay, so after that, you said you wanted to get your PhD.

- Yes.

- But you couldn't do that?

- So in India at that time, what it was, if you didn't have a degree in biology, you couldn't pursue further education in biology.

And I wanted to be a researcher.

- Okay.

- I wanted to be a scientist all my life.

And then, but I started looking abroad, US, Europe, Australia, and I figured I could not afford it.

And finally, a professor at University of Arkansas heard about me and contacted me and.. - How did he hear about you?

- So what I was doing was I was in India, I was traveling to different local organizations who wanted help in conservation work and they would contact me and I would go and start working with them.

- Like, what's that mean?

What were you doing?

- Whatever needed to be done, somebody for example, was wanted to work on four-horned antelopes, but did not have enough manpower.

So I said, all right, I'll be here.

And I'll go out into forest, I will collect all that data for you.

I will do all the statistical analysis, and I will do all the mapping and everything.

And basically do the whole research project for you, kind of a thing.

- Was this like when you were, you had the video of you catching snakes on a canoe in that.

- This was the, when I was catching a snake in canoe that was after I'd come to Arkansas.

- Okay, well we'll keep it chronologically.

So this guy in Arkansas hears.

- Yes.

- About you, and he reaches out, I mean, is that a big deal to get a guy from India to come to Arkansas and study?

- It was a big deal for me.

- Sure, yeah.

- 'Cause.

- Yeah, but I mean like the red tape of doing that, is that hard?

- If you've got financial resources, it's not that hard, but I didn't have any of that.

So for me being invited to come to do a PhD and their professor.

- Yeah.

- And then the professor actually paying for my admission fees.

- Oh wow.

- That does not happen.

- Yeah.

- That does not, I don't know anybody else for whom that has happened.

- Well, I mean, you must be smart, right?

'Cause what's the Doctoral Academy Fellowship?

- Yes, so I don't know about the smart bit.

- It says on here.

- But I got.

- And that is smart.

I mean, my wife wrote that.

I don't know what we're gonna say.

- But I did get the Doctoral Academy Fellowship.

- Yeah.

- And as a freshman in my undergrad, I had published a research paper on using satellite images to designing special economic zones in India, which was later actually picked up by the government.

And they used my project in designing special economic zones.

And that got published as a research paper.

- Okay.

- I said that.

- I mean that's not something simple.

That's not like painting a wall and say here's my community service.

That's unreal.

- That was fun.

And so that project, basically that paper, The University of Arkansas asked the Doctoral Academy Fellowship Program to basically attract graduate students that they don't want to lose out to other universities.

And they thought that I might join some other university so they offered me Doctoral Academy Fellowship, which was 40K tax free.

And it was mine to keep, and only handful of students get it.

And I can't even say only handful of students get it every year, it's just handful of students get it.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I mean that's something you put on a business card, you know what I'm saying?

That's impressive.

- Thank you, thank you.

- Yeah, so with that money, did that allow you to go and study at Arkansas?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Yes, so that money not only allowed me to study at Arkansas, but also allowed me to do my research work without ever having to worry about finances.

- They're the Razorbacks, right?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- Did you do any studying on that?

- I did not study the razorbacks.

- There's a joke there somewhere, but we're just gonna move on.

- Yeah, (laughs) - All right, so what was your PhD study in?

- So my PhD was studying shrub land birds.

So birds that live in shrub areas.

- Yeah.

- And how we can conserve them.

- Like deserts or what do you?

- Almost deserts.

- Yeah.

- Not desert, but on the brink of becoming a desert type of region.

And it was in India and in India shrub forests were classified as wasteland.

And so I went.

- Wasteland?

- Yeah, wasteland.

- Okay.

- It's basically you can do anything on that land, no questions asked.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Even though it's not yours?

- Well, you got to buy the land.

- Oh, I got ya.

- Or you can go and extract any resources from it.

Like it's not protected.

- Gotcha.

- It's open season over there on the land.

And I was, how do you conserve a land that is classified as waste land?

And for that, I chose birds as my mascot and I basically started working with the local communities over there and that was my PhD project program.

- Okay, so how does that go over?

Because you're wanting to, was your goal to prove that it's worth protecting these?

- Yes.

- Waste or whatever the scrub, the shrub lands?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- How'd that go over with the people that were there?

- Initially, people asked me that, do your parents even know what you're doing with your life?

- Thank you, I get that every day.

Hey, radio boy dude, (both laughing) - And, but eventually they started seeing where I was coming from and how conserving those shrub forest were going to actually help the farmers.

And so to this day, though my PhD is over, the farmers are following the practices that I was talking with them.

And they're working on conserving those shrub forests now.

They have taken it upon themselves to conserve it, which is helping them.

- Tell me about working with those farmers.

Like, was there an exchange of information or was there one side teaching another, how did that work?

- I'm more of a person who believes in learning from others.

Those farmers have spent more time in that region than I did.

They know that landscape much more.

And so I asked them to teach me about that landscape, about those birds over there.

And when they were teaching me, they actually started taking pride in those forests.

And I didn't have to tell them about conserving it.

They started doing it on their own now, because of that pride.

- That's the best way to do it.

'Cause if you tell me to do something, I don't know.

- No.

- I'm not gonna want to do it, but if you can show something like the benefit or whatever, yeah, that exactly.

Has that transitioned here to Illinois when you're working with farmers?

That is how, what I want to, so right now I'm setting up my research program and I'm contacting different farmers, but that is exactly what I want to do.

- Yeah.

- And conserving grassland birds, I get like, using them as a mascot, I want to connect with the farmers.

I want to learn from them about Illinois.

- Yeah.

- I want to learn their knowledge of the land over here and how that can be used for conservation.

I want them to teach me how that can be used for conservation.

I want the students, the kids, to basically be proud of their culture, and their heritage, and use that for conservation.

- As a farmer, I can see the other side because we see someone like yourself that wants to study birds or whatever on our ground, and there's always that fear, right, that someone like yourself has got an agenda that wants to stop me from farming.

- Yeah.

- Even though we've been doing it for hundreds of years and that, how do you overcome that?

- So one thing is I don't have an agenda on people stopping farming.

My belief is we cannot, though I'm a conservation biologist, I want conservation to happen, but I think conservation does not happen in a vacuum.

I can't make conservation happen without the support of local community.

And so there is no point of me trying to stop local communities, local farmers, from doing what they're doing for their benefit, by saying we got to save the birds.

- What we need to come up with is a plan that not only saves birds, but actually benefits the farmers, and that I've seen happen in India.

And if we can find that to work over here, that would be just brilliant.

'Cause I believe when you can touch someone's heart, the possibilities are limitless.

And I want to connect with every farmer over here, learn from them and basically reconnect with the beauty of Illinois.

- So for a guy that grew up in India, and studied tigers and snakes, I mean, we, on your first episode we had a, what was that?

A cobra that we milked here, just you'll have to watch it, right?

So for that to go into here where you're studying birds and insects in Illinois, I mean, is this where you wanna be?

- This is a very good natural transition for me, having worked on similar birds in India, grassland, shrub land birds.

- Illinois is the dream position where I could be.

The Bradley over here has got a wonderful program for the students where every student gets a very personalized attention.

Faculty members treat every student, they're invested personally in every student's success.

And I've got the landscape that I wanted to work in.

Grassland, agriculture, mosaic.

- Well, I hope you get farmers that want to work with you because I as a farmer, I can tell you most farmers, the vast, vast majority of 'em, they like nature, right?

- Yes.

- They like seeing the birds or if they see like an indigo bunny, they're gonna brag I saw one.

So they love this stuff.

There is always that fear that we're getting blamed unfairly for hurting the environment.

So I hope you find farmers.

And if farmers want to work with you or are they open to reaching out to you?

- There's are quite a few farmers who have been reaching out to me.

In fact, one thing that I want to do is work in getting that image that farmers are hurting the environment out.

I want to work that image out, because farmers are often working towards conservation of the land, 'cause it's their land.

- Yeah.

- They have that relationship with it.

They don't want to hurt it.

And I want to work that negative image of farmers away from.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- I'm all for that.

- Also.

(both laughing) - So this study with the birds and the insects, what are you hoping to learn there?

- So what I want to see is the birds, grassland birds are declining very rapidly.

In fact, they're the fastest declining group of birds.

- They are, like, give me an example of one everybody would know, a grassland bird.

- Like a Meadow Lark?

- Okay, sure.

- Yeah, they are rapidly declining, red-wing black birds, they are declining.

Now we also have insects that are declining.

People say decline of insects is causing decline of birds, but nobody's quantified it.

I want to do that.

- Okay.

- I want to see that relationship in numbers between decline of insects and decline of birds, and basically how we can arrest that decline, and prevent that from happening.

- Okay, well, I think that would be great.

And like I said, I think that is something that agriculture should be walking step and step with you.

Let's switch gears a little bit.

You've done a lot of traveling?

- Yes.

- Okay, so tell me some of the places that you've studied.

- I've studied in Himalayan Mountains.

I was up there searching for a bird known as red crossbill.

- You were not, you were looking for yeti, weren't you?

- I wish I'd seen a yeti too.

- Yeah, you didn't see him?

- No, I got a yeti bottle though.

(both laughing) - Kinda walked right into that one, didn't I?

Yes, yeah.

(both laughing) So what kind of birds are up in the Himalayans?

- Himalayas is, even a person who's not interested in birds.

- Yeah.

- They wish they have eyes all over.

- Yeah.

- And binoculars on all the eyes because there's so many birds and they're so colorful.

They're absolutely brilliant.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- I didn't know that.

- Like there's one bird, you even get that bird in US, but you get it in Himalayas, it's known as red crossbill, the one that I was searching.

And it's beak literally goes cross.

- Oh, I have a cousin like that, (Anant laughing) I'm sorry, yes.

- Okay.

- So you got like normal beak goes like this, the crossbill beak goes like this.

- Okay.

- And that's for eating the pine cones.

- Oh?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- But then I've also been in Belize.

I take students to Belize for study abroad courses and Costa Rica, Trinidad, Tobago.

- What's a favorite place you've been?

I should have known better to ask you that.

But try, try to answer.

- That, see, you'll say that I'm being very diplomatic right now, but every place has got its own beauty.

That every time I'm there, I fall in love with that place.

But truly I've fallen in love with Central Illinois.

It's an absolutely magnificent place to be in.

Yeah.

(both laughing) - I love Central Illinois too.

Yeah, but I don't know, I kind of wanna see a tiger.

- That's it, that's what I was saying.

Every place has got its own beauty.

- The landscape I see over here, I had not seen that in where the tigers are.

- So like what is your hope for the rest of your life?

Are you hoping just to continue to move around?

Are you hoping to settle in one area?

- I think I found my permanent home over here.

- Really?

- Finally, I think I'm ready to settle down in Peoria where, and work with students at Bradley, and work with this landscape and devote my life to conservation of farms, prairies and wetlands and Central Illinois.

- Got ya.

- Yeah.

- Well, Central Illinois will be lucky to have you.

- Thank you, I'm the lucky one to be here.

- That's true.

Bradley's a good, I don't know much about it.

I went to Southern Illinois, we mainly drank there.

That's all we did, yeah.

But actually the students at Bradley, they actually go to class, right?

- They do go to class.

In fact, the students are so brilliant that my first semester, we went ahead and collected insect data on urban parks and nature protected areas.

- Yeah.

- And three or four of my students actually went ahead and published or submitted a research paper on the work they had done.

Now that I've not seen it happen anywhere else.

- That was fantastic.

Well, you're teaching these kids, right?

- Yeah.

- And some of 'em have got to have these dreams that a lot of people are gonna think are crazy.

- Yeah, yeah.

- What advice are you giving 'em because you kind of did that yourself?

- My main advice for all the young generation or even older generation, anybody basically, is follow your dreams, do what you want to do, not what you have to do.

And when you do what you want to do, you basically at that point of time, you are not forcing yourself to do anything.

The energy, the work, the whole thing comes naturally.

And I believe that's what makes the difference between a good, a skilled worker in that whatever field it is, and a magician in that field, because now your work becomes your way of life.

So find out deep within your heart, you know what you truly want to do in your life, and just follow it.

And of course, one of the simplest answers would be sit on couch and watch Netflix, something else from that.

- Or PBS.

- Or PBS.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, I think it's great because honestly, if you hadn't have done that, there'd probably be a bunch of crooked highways in India right now.

- Yeah, my mom said that she would live in a house designed by me because I was a civil engineer.

And I said no, even I wouldn't live in that house.

(both laughing) - If people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do it?

- They can contact me on my email ID.

It's adeshwal@sfmail.bradley.edu.

- We had you on the XM Show and you were spelling out that and they cut you off.

- If you want I can do it.

- Go ahead, let's spell it out.

- So a for alpha, d for delta, e for echo, s for snake, h for hurry, w for wall, a for America, l for London, @, F for.

- Easy.

- Fox.

(both laughing) - Fox.

- Fox.

- Yes.

- F for fox, s for snake, m for male, a for America, i, for.

- Incredible.

- Incredible.

- L for London, .bradley.edu.

- I don't care how mad the crew is gonna be.

I'm gonna make them spell that every letter on the bottom, as we're doing this, this is the best ever.

- Thank you.

(both laughing) - I can see now why we ran outta time on the XM Show.

- Yeah.

(both laughing) - I can tell you, I was very proud of myself.

- Yes, it was.

Anant, you're a treasure to have here.

So Anant Deshwal, thank you so very much for everything you're doing and welcome to Central Illinois, and we look forward to all the good you're gonna do.

So thank you very much, everybody else we'll catch you next week.

- Thank you.

(dramatic music)