Bengaluru: The state government has appointed Sanjay Mohan, senior IFS officer as the new state forest force chief and Principal Chief Conservator of Forest.

Incumbent chief Punati Sridhar is retiring on April 30. Till now Sanjay Mohan was the PCCF (wild life).

According to his profile, Sanjay Mohan started his career as the ACF, Hiriur, Chitrdurga (1989). The work included development, regulation and protection of forest. He underwent a nine month course in wildlife management training at wildlife Institute of India.

He was posted at Bidar as DCF, social forestry where the work included afforestation with the local village forest committees (VFC) and sapling distribution to farmers. Subsequently, he worked as working plan officer, Mysore followed with the posting in Koppa division in Chikmaglur (1996-1999).

In 1999, he was posted at Dharwad Social Forestry and promoted in 2002 as Conservator of Forest and General Manager of Karnataka State Forest Industries Corporation (KSFIC).

From here, he went to Govt of India and worked at Institute of wood science and technology (IWST) from 2002-2007 heading the wood energy and chemistry branches.

Here, he worked on a few projects such as fuel wood consumption (demand and supply) studies in Kolar district; identifying lesser known mangrove areas in the eastern and western coasts of India; identification of female seedlings in Garcinia species by chemical methods (Iso enzymes studies) and helped in establishing an Indo-Italian wood working centre, which he headed. After coming back, he worked as Conservator of Forests Shimoga circle.

From 2009-2012, he worked at Jungles Lodges and Resorts, an ecotourism company, Govt of Karnataka. Here, he led a team which developed new resorts at Mangalore and Hampi.

His areas of interest in forestry are wildlife conservation with focus on birds.