Madhav Gadgil • (1942-2026): Scientist, ‘people’s ecologist’, voice of Western Ghats, forests, rivers, communities

Gadgil was born in 1942 in Pune to Pramila and Dhananjay Gadgil. Decades later, following long years of service at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, Gadgil returned to the city after retirement. He continued to engage widely with people and wrote regularly about the pulls and pressures of India’s growth trajectory on its ecology.

So much so, those who worked with him and knew him said his legacy was that of a “people’s ecologist”. This, even as he led institutions, such as the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), which he founded at IISc, and chaired seminal Government panels, such as the Western Ghats Expert Ecology Panel (WGEEP).

Beyond his work as a field scientist and mentor, it was the role he played as chairman of WGEEP and its report, calling for safeguards for a large swathe of the fragile Ghats, that will remain etched in public discourse.

Raghunath Mashelkar, who worked alongside Gadgil in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s scientific advisory committee, posted on X that he “spoke for forests, rivers and communities that had no voice”.

Ramachandra Guha, who co-authored two books with Gadgil, including the seminal This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (1992), posted on X: “I am devastated. He was an exemplary scientist and citizen, and to me, a friend and mentor for forty years and more.”

In all, Gadgil wrote 225 scientific papers and seven books, including another co-authored with Guha titled Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India (1995).

After studying biology at Fergusson College in Pune, and completing his masters in Zoology from the University of Mumbai, Gadgil pursued a PhD in Biology with a thesis in Mathematical Ecology at Harvard University. After teaching biology at Harvard for two years, he returned to India and joined IISc in 1971, where he continued to work till his retirement as the institute’s chairman in 2004.

It was at IISc in 1982, that Gadgil founded CES, the first Centre of Excellence, in the newly formed Department of Environment. Earlier, he had undertaken extensive field studies, ranging from one on the forest ecosystem in Bandipur Tiger Reserve to another on the ecology and management of bamboo resources in Karnataka. His field work with colleagues on protected areas in southern India eventually led to the establishment of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in 1986.

Prof Raman Sukumar, who worked closely with Gadgil at CES, said, “The fact that today Bengaluru is considered the Mecca of academic studies in ecology and evolutionary behaviour was, I would say, almost entirely due to Madhav.”

Sukumar said, “But beyond his academic legacy, he was a great believer in a democratic approach to planning and executing conservation on the ground, championing the cause of tribal communities. He was to an extent anti-government and was enraged by the displacement of people from protected areas for wildlife conservation. In that way, he was one of the first academics in his field to champion people’s causes.”

Post-retirement, Gadgil’s vast and intimate experience of the Western Ghats as a person growing up around the Sahyadri Hills would come to shape public policy as he chaired the WGEEP, constituted by the then UPA government in 2010. Gadgil’s panel recommended that the entire Ghats be declared as ecologically sensitive in graded categories, based on their sensitivity. In brief, it sought 1,27,000 sq km to be marked as ecologically sensitive.

It set off a political firestorm, as the larger states falling in the Western Ghats range — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala — opposed its implementation. Kerala saw the most intense protests, with communities and politicians expressing fears of loss of livelihoods due to what they believed were severe restrictions prescribed in the report’s recommendations.

Ironically, though Gadgil prescribed a participatory and graded form of ecological protection in the 2011 report, the UPA government withheld it from the public domain. Once the report was made public in 2012, following a court order, it was effectively sidelined, and a new panel under scientist K Kasturirangan mapped the Ghats to prescribe protections. The second exercise forms the basis of a draft Government notification in 2022 seeking to protect roughly 57,000 sq km as ecologically sensitive. The final notification is pending, with an expert committee examining the Kasturirangan report’s recommendations.

Mahesh Rangarajan, professor of environmental studies and history at Ashoka University said Gadgil had a “scholarly spirit” and never took umbrage to criticism of his work, as long as it was based on research.

Gadgil was honoured with the Padma Shri in 1981 and Padma Bhushan in 2013. On the global stage, he won the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Volvo Environment Prize. Last year, he won the United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth award for lifetime achievement for his contributions to the environment, conservation and ecology.