Kota Ullas Karanth is a conservation zoologist and a leading tiger expert based in Karnataka, India. He was the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's India Programme. He is notable for pioneering the scientific use of camera traps in population density studies of large wild mammals in India. He was a Senior Conservation Scientist with the New York based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Technical Director of the WCS Tiger Conservation Program.

Kota Shivaram Karanth, also abbreviated as K. Shivaram Karanth, was an Indian polymath, who was a novelist in Kannada language, playwright and an ecological conservationist. Ramachandra Guha called him the "Rabindranath Tagore of Modern India, who has been one of the finest novelists-activists since independence". He was the third writer to be decorated with the Jnanpith Award for Kannada, the highest literary honor conferred in India. His son Ullas is an ecological conservationist.