Monsoon Jyoti Gogoi

Young Naturalist Awards (2010)

Monsoon Jyoti Gogoi’s passion is butterflies. His youth belies the fire in his belly for all things natural. He has spent the past five years recording and photographing over 500 butterfly species in Upper Assam, including some rare and endangered species that no naturalists had ever documented before. He is working with the World Wildlife Fund-India’s Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong-Panbari-Dollamora elephant corridor monitoring project and is also recording the butterfly diversity in the Jeypore-Dehling Reserved Forest in Upper Assam. He has rediscovered and photographed rare species such as the white punch Dodona henrici longicaudata, pale-striped dawnfly Capilia zennara, purple lancer Salanoemia fuscicornis and the yellow-band palmer Lotongus sarala. Monsoon is by any count a remarkable boy. After graduating in Zoology, he is currently pursuing his Masters in Wildlife Biology at the North Orissa University. He has a special interest in skippers – one of the least explored of all the butterfly families. In his words: “Once a species becomes extinct or a forest is lost, it will not come back. Now is when we must work to protect all things small and wonderful.” 

They love forests, have a passion to save all creatures great and small, plus a burning desire to assert themselves in support of the natural world. This is why we have honoured Zeeshan Mirza, Sooraj Bishnoi and Monsoon Jyoti Gogoi.