IWN Report — Wednesday, 9 September 2026
Vantara will not be able to bring a new animal onto its Jamnagar campus without written approval from a five-person council with no seat for anyone who works there.
The wildlife rescue and conservation centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat, announced the full membership of its new Governing Council on 4 September. Vantara had already named John E. Scanlon AO, the former Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), as the council’s independent chair back in August; this week’s announcement filled out the remaining seats.
The Panel
Joining Scanlon are Justice Krishna Murari, who served on the Supreme Court of India from 2019 until his retirement in 2023 and was earlier Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court; Craig Hoover, Executive Vice President of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and a former senior official at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who takes up his seat in January once his current term at the AZA ends; Subhash K. Malkhede, a career Indian Forest Service officer and former Chief Wildlife Warden of Karnataka; and Greta F. Iori, an Ethiopian-Italian conservationist who has spent more than fifteen years on human-wildlife coexistence and anti-trafficking work across Africa. Dr Kushal Konwar Sarma, an elephant veterinarian formerly with Guwahati’s College of Veterinary Science, sits on the council as a non-voting ex officio member. Vantara employees cannot hold voting seats.
The council’s remit covers Vantara’s conservation, rescue and compliance work, and it now has the final call on any future application to bring an animal into the country. Under commitments Vantara made to India’s CITES Management Authority on 19 August, no application to import an animal will be filed before 5 June 2027. After that date, any application will need the council’s written approval, following its own internal review.
Scanlon described the group as “an exceptional team that blends deep expertise from within India and globally.” Vantara’s chief executive, Vivaan Karani, said the council’s independence was central to carrying out the commitments made in the CITES letter, and would keep the organisation’s decisions “subject to rigorous and independent oversight.”
The new oversight structure follows a Supreme Court-ordered inquiry into how Vantara acquired its animals. The Court set up a Special Investigation Team led by retired Justice Jasti Chelameswar in August 2025 to examine the allegations; after a twenty-day probe, the SIT found no violation of the Wildlife Protection Act, the Recognition of Zoo Rules, or customs and foreign trade law. A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and P.B. Varale accepted those findings on 15 September that year.
The council is backed by a new CITES Due Diligence Committee and an Advisory Board, along with a Special Director and an Office of Compliance and Due Diligence — structures Vantara set out in the same letter to the CITES Management Authority. Vantara has also said it will look at ways to open a regular dialogue with conservationists working in the field, and will gather feedback on how that might work.
Sources: Vantara · Vantara’s letter to the CITES Management Authority · Bar and Bench · LiveLaw · Supreme Court Observer · LawChakra