Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, champion of Western Ghats conservation, dies

IT WAS THOSE bird-watching walks on Vetal Tekdi (Hill) in Pune at a young age, encouraged by his economist father, that made him fall in love with the Western Ghats.

- NIKHIL GHANEKAR

But, as he wrote in a biographical essay for the India Seminar journal in 2020, it was an exchange of letters at 14 with Salim Ali on a green beeeater’s tail and a meeting later with the legendary ornithologist that made up his mind to become a field ecologist.

Apioneer in ecological sciences, Madhav Gadgil, 83, died late on Wednesday night in Pune after a brief illness. He was one of India’s foremost voices on ecology and environment protection.

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 the pulls and pressures of India’s growth trajectory on its ecology.