In 2019, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) conferred the Salim Ali Award for that year on renowned ecologist Madhav Gadgil, who reminisced then how Ali, India’s legendary ornithologist, known till this day as the ‘birdman of India’, sparked in him an interest in nature that was to last a lifetime.
Gadgil recounted that as an 11-year-old, with a passing interest in birdwatching, a bird called green bee-eater intrigued him as in one season it had a long pink feather in the middle of its tail, and the next season it was missing.
Gadgil’s father, economist Dhananjaya Ramchandra Gadgil, who was also an avid birdwatcher, a member of the BNHS and knew Ali personally, suggested that his son write to the ornithologist.
“Ali promptly replied to my letter and that’s how my interest peaked,” Gadgil said.
In his 2023 memoir, ‘A Walk Up the Hill’, Gadgil wrote about his association with Ali. “I was captivated by his knowledge, wit and charm -- at the age of fourteen, I decided to become a field ecologist like him,” he wrote.
Gadgil, who passed away on Wednesday evening at a Pune hospital at 83, and known for his work on the Western Ghats, also credited his father and next-door neighbour anthropologist Irawati Karve for deeply influencing his interests in nature, ecology and society.
Gadgil’s father was to later become the deputy chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission (1967-1971) and is also credited with evolving the guidelines for the allocation of central assistance to the states in the Five-Year Plans, which came to be known as the ‘Gadgil formula’. Gadgil senior was also the founder director of Pune’s Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.
While Gadgil opted to study ecology, he was, like his father, an institution builder.
Madhav Gadgil graduated in biology from Fergusson College in 1963 and completed his master’s degree in zoology from the University of Mumbai in 1965. He went on to pursue a PhD from Harvard University in 1969, where he worked on mathematical ecology and animal behaviour. After returning to India in 1971, Gadgil joined the Indian Institute of Science in 1973.
During his tenure at IISc, he established key institutions, including the Centre for Ecological Sciences and the Centre for Theoretical Studies, laying the foundation for modern ecological research in the country.
He retired from IISc in 2004 and later continued his academic engagement with the Agharkar Research Institute in Pune, and the University of Goa.
In 2010, the government appointed him the chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), popularly known as the Gadgil Commission.
In 2011, Gadgil-headed panel, in its report, recommended that a significant portion of the Western Ghats be designated as ecologically sensitive, triggering intense debate.
Gadgil’s influence on public policy, as Congress leader and former Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh recalled, has been profound going back to his crucial role in the Save Silent Valley Movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s and his intervention to protect forests in Bastar was crucial in the mid-80s.
Later, he gave shape to a new direction to the Botanical Survey of India and the Zoological Survey of India, Ramesh said.
Gadgil also significantly contributed to the Biological Diversity Act and the creation of the People’s Biodiversity Register.
He was a passionate votary for nature conservation with immense respect for India’s indigenous and rural people. When in 1975, as part of his Project Tiger work, he came across evidence of felling of trees in the Bandipur National Park, which had been supplanted with teak for timber, he wrote an article in a newspaper.
The forest department asked him not to publish without their clearance. Gadgil was then with the IISc. The incident took place two weeks after the Emergency was imposed on June 25, 1975, but the then IISc Director Satish Dhawan backed him and asked him to speak truthfully.
“This was a watershed moment that brought home to me the value of free speech. I have striven, to this day, to write fearlessly on issues I have knowledge of, stating objective facts including those related to inefficiency and corruption in our body politic,” Gadgil wrote in his memoirs.
In 2024, the United Nations presented Gadgil with the annual Champions of the Earth award, the UN's highest environmental honour, for his seminal work on the Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot. Gadgil authored and co-authored several books, including ‘This Fissured Land’ and ‘Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India’, with Ramchandra Guha. He was conferred with the Padma Shri (1981), Padma Bhushan (2006), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, Volvo Environment Prize, and Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.
 "Madhav Gadgil: Ecologist who played key role in Western Ghats' conservation")
