Vikram,
In India, most of our wildlife live in areas outside our Sanctuaries and Protected Areas. These poorly documented places are often the first to fall victims to the so called "development". In a lot of cases, the Collector of the district thinks that clearing up trees and constructing houses etc in the revenue lands would drive away the elephants and reduce human-animal conflict. We need to make our planners and bureaucrats sensitive about the needs of our wildlife and the importance of our wilderness areas.

I agree that field biologist only publish in a few scientific journals. One of the reasons is that helps in colouring their CV. They boast of paper publications in a few journals abroad. Writing in mass media is not their focus. The most important reason for this is that most of the field biologists lack the writing skils to publish in mass media. It is important to write in a lucid manner, else the common man won't read beyond the first few lines.

The field biologists also need to have the overall perspective to write on topics other than their specialised technique or narrowly defined research topic.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi