Follow TNM’s WhatsApp channel for news updates and story links.
Veteran ecologist and environmental scholar Madhav Gadgil passed away in Pune late Wednesday night, January 7, after a brief illness. He was 84.
“I am very sorry to share the sad news that my father, Madhav Gadgil, passed away late last night in Pune after a brief illness,” his son Siddhartha Gadgil said.
Widely regarded as the father of modern Indian ecology, Gadgil was one of the country’s foremost environmental thinkers who consistently argued that conservation must be rooted in scientific rigour, social justice and the active participation of local communities. His life’s work profoundly shaped India’s environmental thinking and policy framework over more than five decades.
Gadgil was best known for chairing the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), constituted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010. The panel’s 2011 report, popularly known as the Gadgil Report, warned that unchecked mining, quarrying, large dams and infrastructure projects would trigger ecological disasters in the fragile Western Ghats. While the report faced strong opposition from several states and development lobbies, its recommendations gained renewed attention following devastating floods and landslides in Kerala, Kodagu and parts of Maharashtra in subsequent years.
Born in Pune in 1942, Madhav Dhananjaya Gadgil was the founder of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, established in 1983. Under his leadership, the centre emerged as one of India’s leading institutions for research in ecology, conservation biology and environmental policy. His academic work spanned population biology, human ecology, ecological history and biodiversity conservation, with a strong emphasis on coexistence between humans and nature.
A key architect of India’s Biological Diversity Act, 2002, Gadgil also pioneered the concept of People’s Biodiversity Registers, empowering local self-governing bodies to document and protect biological resources and traditional ecological knowledge. His early scientific studies on sacred groves highlighted their ecological importance long before the idea gained wider recognition.
Over his career, Gadgil authored or co-authored seven books and more than 225 scientific papers. His influential works include This Fissured Land (with Ramachandra Guha), Ecology and Equity, and his autobiography A Walk Up the Hill. He also served on the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and chaired international bodies such as the Science and Technology Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility.
Gadgil received numerous national and international honours, including the Padma Shri in 1981, the Padma Bhushan in 2006, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2015 and the Volvo Environment Prize. In 2024, the United Nations Environment Programme named him one of its Champions of the Earth, describing him as a “people’s scientist” whose career spanned six decades.
His wife, noted monsoon scientist Sulochana Gadgil, passed away in July last year.