At the Amboli wildlife reserve in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district, a tiger attacked and killed a cow at midnight last December. Chances were high that the big cat would return to claim its prey, which was lying off the road that ran along the reserve. Tejas Thackeray, the younger son of former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, crouched not too far from the carcass to capture the moment on camera. But there was no sign of the tiger.
By 6am, Tejas was told that the tiger had killed two more cows around midnight. Maybe it had its stomach full and did not need this one, after all. Only then did Tejas go back to his cottage. “That kind of mad passion for wildlife is normal for TT,” said one of his fellow wildlife enthusiasts. Tejas, 28, is ‘TT’ for his close friends.
When Tejas embarked upon his first herping trip to Amboli in 2012, looking for amphibians and reptiles, he was just a teenager. He discovered a new species of fish during that trip, which was later named Schistura hiranyakeshi. “It was a freshwater fish way smaller than our little finger and was easy to miss,” said Tejas. “It was ethereal and beautiful, unlike anything I had ever seen.” He returned to Amboli in 2017, with all necessary permits to document the fish. Tejas made public the entire process during the Covid lockdown in 2021. The pond at the Shiva temple in Amboli where he spotted the fish got the ‘Schistura hiranyakeshi biodiversity heritage site tag’ when Uddhav was chief minister.
Tejas has to his credit a crab, a snake and a gecko that he named after his family. He has discovered nearly 60 species so far, a result of his extensive travels. “I have lived in all border areas of India, except the Pakistan border,” he said. “I once spent 99 hours on a boat to spot a tigress in the Sundarbans, I have lived on the Dri River in Arunachal Pradesh to spot Mishmi takin, a goat-antelope. I have been to the Sandakphu mountains in Nepal to see the red pandas in the snow. I have visited almost all national parks, wildlife reserves and other habitats in India. I have known the country as a traveller and an explorer.”
Speaking with THE WEEK at Matoshree, the family home of the Thackerays in Mumbai, Tejas said that despite being a member of an illustrious political family, he had been largely successful in staying out of the limelight and following his passion. “I have been at every Dussehra rally. I have toured all of Maharashtra, but people would never notice me,” he said.
More than the crowds and the rallies, Tejas loves the jungle. During one such trip to Amboli, after discovering three new crab species, Tejas said he realised the limitless potential of what more could be done. “If I could discover three new species during a fun trip with friends, how much more can we achieve with a properly planned, concentrated effort on the freshwater crab diversity of Maharashtra?”
The last person to work on the freshwater crabs of Maharashtra was an Indian-born British naturalist, Alfred William Alcock, back in 1909. “These crabs were seen for the first time after 1909. So I thought we should rediscover them. I spent almost five back-to-back monsoons in Koyna, Radhanagari, Satara, Sangli, Raigad and Konkan and ended up discovering 20 species of crabs and also one new genus, which was named Sahyadriana thackerayi,” he said.
Tejas is also curious about fishes, geckos and snakes. After his initial adventures, he got more people to join him, setting up the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation in 2019. What began as a hobby gradually turned into a mission, requiring funds, permits, researchers, experts and much more.
On running the TWF and making it a full-time career, Tejas said a lot of people try to advise him. “But this is my baby. Let me have my own philosophy for it. Even though I have not been in politics, I come from a political family. I have seen my father and grandfather run the party. I have seen them nurture it. There has always been a philosophy and vision for the party, both short-term and long-term. And that is how I look at the foundation.”
Tejas developed an interest in geckos in 2015, when he went to Anamalai in Tamil Nadu for the first time. It was September, and the monsoon was about to end when he found his very first Cnemaspis, one of the most diverse geckos. “I was a random teenager walking in the dense rainforest. The canopy there was so dense that it was difficult to guess the time of the day. It was in the thick and dense leaf litter where one looks for geckos,” he said. While trying to find the Cnemaspis, Tejas almost stepped on a hump-nosed pit viper, which was completely camouflaged, looking like dry leaf. Once the visibility was so poor and he found himself face to face with wild elephants. He also encountered a tigress and her cubs. “Those tigers were quite different from the ones you find in other national parks in India as they have never seen any human beings in their lives,” he said. “Despite all these adventures, we could not collect the Cnemaspis because we did not have the required permits.” Tejas got the permits a few years later, and he submitted the details of his findings earlier this year.
There are many reasons why Tejas has chosen a career with a difference. “I was not the best when it came to academics. I was an average student, my maths skills were terrible,” he said. “But I always had a good understanding of the relationship various species had with their habitats.” In the years that followed, Tejas went from the Sahyadris to the Eastern Ghats, the northeast, the Andamans, the Malayan archipelago, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. “Everything in the tropics is interlinked,” he said.
In 2017, Tejas took a break after his graduation and travelled extensively, which included a 14-day trek to the Chinese border in Arunachal Pradesh, following the Dri River and camping in freezing cold to photograph Mishmi takin. He was accompanied by nearly 40 guards. That was when the Doklam conflict with China happened. But it did not stop him. “When TT is on a trip, he is in the zone. We eat, sleep and stay in the jungle. He leaves his phone behind and walks with locals. In some places, it is just impossible to have 40 security guards around; the forest department would not let us carry out the research,” said Akshay Khandekar, a colleague.
Tejas found inspiration from his father to pursue a career in wildlife. “When I was growing up, my grandfather was at the peak of his political career. And my dad was into politics, but he loved photography and wildlife more,” said Tejas. “He used to travel a lot to the tiger reserves in Kanha, Tadoba and Bandhavgarh. He would go into the wild to shoot the photos of lions and tigers. He was crazy. I would keep saying that I wanted to accompany him, but I was too small.”
Tejas still remembers how his father would pick up one wildlife book for him from every store he visited. He now has a whole library filled with books his father bought for him. “My dad sparked interest for the whole thing in me,” he said. “Then we started going out together looking for tigers, but eventually my interest turned towards the smaller biodiversity.”
What does his father have to say about his passion now? “He says what I do is crazy and I tell him that what he is doing is crazy. So we reach a common ground―let us do our own thing.” But it does not mean that Tejas is completely cut off from politics. People recognise him more these days, as his presence has grown on posters and on the party’s [Shiv Sena (UBT)] social media handles. “Yes, they have started putting my pictures on posters and I don’t quite enjoy being in the limelight. If it was in my hands, you still would not see me much. But then I cannot really disappoint my family either. It is always an act of carefully balancing between what I want and what I am duty-bound to do. Being a son, I am always there for my father.”
Yet, nature remains his first love. “I am a nomad at heart, I am made for the jungles,” said Tejas. Even when he is in a room with his party workers, his heart is where the next species can be found.