Col Chepudira P Muthanna

Col Cheppudira P Muthanna was born in Madikeri, Kodagu on 12th September 1953. He was an Army Officer. A conservationist and nature lover at heart. Hard-Core environmentalists who worked tirelessly and round the clock to save our habitat.

Family

Father

Cheppudira M Poonacha

Mother

Biddanda

Wife

Biddanda Arathi

Daughter

Somayenda Shivani

Career

• He joined the Indian Army in December 1972 and attended the Defense Services Staff College at Wellington [South India] in 1986.
• He served in the army for twenty-four years and in 1996, he took voluntary retirement from service, having commanded an Infantry Battalion for four years.
• His field tenures included postings in the Himalayas along the Indian border in Kashmir and in North Sikkim, at the Tibetan Plateau.
• He also served in Assam, Punjab and with the Indian Peace Keeping force in Sri Lanka.

Achievements

• He founded the Environment and Health Foundation [India] (EHF) in 1998. The EHF is a small NGO, working mainly on water related issues including Rainwater Harvesting.
• On behalf of the EHF, Col Muthanna has prepared a proposal for Stabilization of Climate Change in the Himalayas and the Mekong Basin. This has been termed as the HIMEK proposal and involves the joint cooperation of 11 countries in the Himalayas and the Mekong Region.
• The International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Asian Institute of Technology at Thailand will soon be signing an MOU on the basis of the HIMEK proposal prepared by Col Muthanna.
• He was the President of the Coorg Wildlife Society from 2003 to 2009, and from 2012 till date. As the President of the Coorg Wildlife Society he has been actively involved in various issues pertaining to conservation and protection of habitat in Coorg, as well as mitigation of human-elephant conflict.
• Under Col Muthanna, the Coorg Wildlife Society filed a PIL and prevented a hydroelectric project in the Evergreen Hill forests of Kodagu that would have inundated large areas of the Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary in Kodagu. He has also helped a local village community in halting a large stone quarrying unit close to the sanctuary.
• He has campaigned for over seven years against a High Tension Power Line through Kodagu which would result in the destruction of more than 54,000 trees. Due to his efforts the power line was realigned and thousands of trees have been saved.
• Muthanna is the Vice Chairman of the Kodagu Model Forest Trust.
• He has prepared projects for the betterment of indigenous communities of Kodagu. This has enabled Kodagu to be included in the Global Fund Program for Community Foundations.
• He has participated in three half marathons in Mumbai between 2009 and 2012.
• He is also the founder and Secretary of the Kodagu Boxing Association and conducted the first Boxing Tournament in Kodagu on 24^th May 2016 at the Coorg Institute of Technology [CIT] campus, Haligattu.
• With a view to protect the lands in Kodagu and to preserve the Coffee Plantations, he founded the Consolidated Coffee Plantations Pvt Ltd during 2009.

Title

• The Coorg Wildlife Society was awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Parisara Prashusti by the Karnataka state Government In 2005.
• He was awarded the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam award for work in the field of Environment by the Government of Karnataka In 2006.
• He has been nominated on three occasions as ‘Coorg Person of the Year’.