Meet the Kerala Teen Who’s Rescued 75+ Snakes and Inspired 9500 Kids About Wildlife

What if the hours your child spent hunched over a screen could instead be traded for a forest trail?

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Inspiration can be found in 14-year-old Ananya Vishwesh from Kerala, whose weekends are defined by the wilderness. The plucky teen is the first dialled number when someone in the neighbourhood stumbles upon a snake, or when the Kerala Forest Department (Palakkad) is looking for a helping hand.

Acknowledging that homeschooling enables her nature exploits, Ananya is grateful for parents who’ve always encouraged her love for the outdoors.

Recalling a trip to Ooty as the inflection point in her wildlife journey, Ananya shares, “I had taken a trip to Ooty when I was in Class 5. I loved the nature trails so much that I convinced my parents to move cities; that year, I started studying in a public school.”

The COVID pandemic that year gave the teenager quite some time to explore the forests of Ooty. “I started getting interested in wildlife. As I began meeting more like-minded people and researching what I could do, I started building a network,” she adds.

Exploring the hidden trails of the Nilgiris

While most of Ananya’s classmates recognised the wild from pictures in their textbooks, Ananya often came face-to-face with them during her rambles through the forest.

Recalling her first wild encounter ever, she says, “I was clicking a picture of a bird in the forest, when, from the bush behind, a sloth bear came and stood in front of me.” Unsure what to do — instinct told her to run, but the accompanying forest guards cautioned her otherwise — Ananya stayed still.

“The guards explained that when a sloth bear is alone and sees people in a group, it gets scared and walks away. But if we were to run, it would start chasing us. That’s the first thing I learnt about the animal," she shares. 

During the eight years that Ananya lived in Ooty, her trepidation was replaced with curiosity. She was fascinated by the biodiversity hotspot — the Nilgiris were declared the first Biosphere Reserve of India on 1 September, 1986 — with its tiger reserves, wildlife sanctuaries, boasting over numerous species, including the Malabar giant squirrel, ‘vulnerable’ Nilgiri marten, the ‘vulnerable’ Nilgiri langur, and the ‘endangered’ Nilgiri tahr.

During her escapades through the forested landscape, Ananya was quick to make friends. “I met many safari guides who agreed to take me through the forest with them,” she shares. It was on these detours that she struck a solid friendship with nature.

“I slowly started recognising the birds and animals, while locals in the Nilgiris began recognising me, and soon I was approached by the Masinagudi Eco Naturalist Club (MENC).” Ananya joined the NGO as its youngest member.

At the end of every day, her parents would hear of her jungle trips. And they were fascinated.

Having encouraged her love for the wild since its nascent stages, Ananya’s father, Vishwesh Subramanian, is proud of his daughter’s passion. “Initially, when she’d tell me she wanted to homeschool, I did not encourage it. As a parent, I thought she was too young to make that decision. But as she began to develop a steady passion for the wild, I began travelling with her and understood that she was serious about this. Soon, she gained confidence, accompanied by officials and formal permissions.” 

Ananya does not take these opportunities lightly. That, at such a young age, she got to step outside the spirals of daily life and breathe in adventures, means a lot to her. While these experiences showed her the beautiful side of the wild, they also served as awareness lessons on wildlife conservation.

Sharing one such experience, Vishwesh says, “One day, while a postmortem was being done on an elephant, a lot of plastic tumbled out of its body. It was a shocking sight. To add to it, the elephant was pregnant.”

These instances serve as a learning for Ananya, who found herself confronted with both the plight of the wild and a choice to do better. Appalled by what she had seen, Ananya began dialoguing with the local NGOs and forest officials to enforce stricter curbs on plastic use in and around the area. While rules were in place, they were being blatantly flouted.

“We requested the forest guards to do stricter vehicle checking before the vehicles entered the forest zone. Slowly, the prevalence of plastic reduced,” Vishwesh shares.

Now back in Kerala, Ananya still spends all her free time in the forest. “My favourite encounters are the ones with elephants.” She pauses for a brief moment before she reasons, “I love all animals; they’re all so colourful and beautiful and have their own traits.” 

Her exploits in the wild are saddled with stories of discovery, compassion, and quiet resilience.

One of the biggest lessons that she’s learnt from the wild is the importance of changing one’s mindset. “Something as simple as not littering the place, storing your wrappers with you and disposing of them later.”

As a tech-savvy teenager, Ananya loves spending time on social media. But even as she does, she channels it in positive ways, learning about wildlife, and other times sharing her experiences in the wild with others. She also finds social media a handy way of getting in touch with wildlife NGOs to learn about any volunteering opportunities.

‘The wild teaches me more than any classroom’

Assistant Conservator of Forests Siva Prasad commends Ananya’s efforts. “I introduced Ananya to our social forestry wing, and they’ve given her a lot of assignments like awareness tasks. When people upload their snake-related issues on our portal, our officials reach the site and rescue the snake. Right now, Ananya is associated with our snake rescuers in Palakkad, and she joins them in rescues.”

Recounting her first solo snake rescue, Ananya says it was a keelback snake. “We caught it near a pond in Masinagudi in Ooty. The snake was under a makeshift house-like structure made up of sheets, stones and rocks and was curled up into two knots. The rescue was challenging, but also interesting to figure out,” she shares.

The teen got her junior master’s degree in herpetology at the age of 11. This, accompanied by practical training from the Kerala Forest Department, helps her. Other times, Ananya has helped rescue a snake stuck on the roof of a home or within a pipeline.

She’s also participated in tiger rescue missions at the Madhumalai Tiger Reserve in 2023. “The forest department was trying to capture the tiger for nine days, and they were unable to. I came up with the idea that we could create a scarecrow in the middle of the field and spray a scent on it to attract the tiger towards it. Once the tiger headed towards the scarecrow, we could tranquilise it.” 

When Ananya isn’t rescuing snakes, she is addressing students about wildlife conservation and her experiences in the wild. Having rescued more than 75 snakes, she has a bunch of stories to tell.

These talks are often accompanied by one-day nature camps. “The children visit the forest areas, the ecotourism zone, to be exact. Before we start the trek, we have a one-hour session where we brief them about the place, the history of the forest and what sort of animals they can expect to see.”

Her ability to speak six languages makes it easier for her to converse with the children. Until now, Ananya has addressed 9,500 children through these sessions. Along with this, she also assists the forest department with clean-up drives, awareness campaigns, and programmes to cement rules and regulations within the forest.

What are you doing this weekend? Take your child on a nature trail; you never know how it could end up becoming their life’s calling.

All pictures courtesy Ananya