The Central Indian Landscape Symposium (CILS) is an annual convening that brings together researchers, conservation practitioners, organisations, and other stakeholders working across the Central Indian landscape. CILS provides a space to share research, field experiences, and perspectives on conservation and development challenges in the region. The symposium encourages exchange across disciplines and institutions, helping connect research with practice and identify areas for collaboration.

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Sessions and discussions cover a range of issues relevant to Central India, including wildlife conservation, landscape connectivity, human–wildlife interactions, livelihoods, agrobiodiversity, and emerging conservation challenges. Through presentations, discussions, and informal exchanges, CILS contributes to the wider NCCI network by creating opportunities for participants to learn from one another, build connections, and explore collaborative approaches to conservation in Central India.

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CILS began in 2014 as a small gathering of people working around the Kanha-Pench corridor. Six editions on, it is the place the network keeps coming back to. Each edition is deliberately horizontal. A student presenting a first season of fieldwork sits at the same table as a field director, or a farmer who has been growing kangni for forty years.

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And much of what CILS produces never happens on stage. It happens in the chai queue, on the field visit bus, and in poster sessions that run an hour over. CILS 7 will be the seventh time this landscape has called us home and made room for itself.