In 2008, Whitaker was selected as an associate laureate in the 2008 Rolex Awards for Enterprise for his efforts to create a network of rainforest research stations throughout India.

During the early Vietnam era, as an American citizen of the correct age, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he trained and served as a medic on a military base hospital in Japan.

[citation needed] After his Army tour of duty, he apprenticed from 1963 to 1965 at the Miami Serpentarium with Bill Haast, whom he affectionately calls "guru".

Whitaker helped the Irula tribe to get involved in extracting snake venom used for the production of antivenom drugs.

[8] Whitaker is currently coordinating an effort to save the gharial, a critically endangered species of Crocodilia on the brink of extinction, with less than 250 individuals left in Indian waters.

He co-founded the Tamil Nadu Society for Social Forestry Research and the Palni Hills Conservation Council.

He is chief technical advisor of Irula Snake Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society and convenor of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Chapter.

[citation needed] He was producer of the 1996, 53-minute, Super 16-mm wildlife documentary, The King and I, made for the National Geographic Channel Explorer program.

This film on the natural history of the king cobra, the largest venomous snake in the world, received the Emmy Award for Outstanding News and Documentary Program Achievement, 1998.

In February 2011, BBC Natural World followed Whitaker during his ongoing research into the causes and prevention of snake bites in India.