Optional: write a lede — not necessarily a WP:LEAD. Interesting > encyclopedic.

When many senior academics in India dismissed Wikipedia from a distance, Prof. Madhav Gadgil chose a different path: he logged in, showed up, and promoted it with great conviction. A pioneering ecologist, public intellectual, and chair of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, Gadgil believed that knowledge about biodiversity, rivers, forests, and villages should not sit behind institutional walls. Instead, he saw Wikimedia projects as living platforms for citizen science — places where local communities could document their environments, hold authorities accountable, and democratise ecological knowledge. Until his passing in January 2026 at the age of 83, he remained a rare figure of his stature who actively bridged professional science, grassroots activism and open knowledge movement.

Prof. Madhav Gadgil passed away in January 2026 at the age of 83. He was an Indian ecologist, academic, and public intellectual, known for his contributions to ecological research, conservation policy, and environmental governance in India, including his role as chair of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel. He was the founder of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, a recipient of the Padma Shri in 1981, the Padma Bhushan (2006), and was awarded the United Nations Champions of the Earth (2024). He was co-recipient of the 2015 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

Prof. Gadgil was also a supporter and contributor to the Wikimedia movement in India. At a time when many Indian academics limited themselves to criticising Wikipedia from a distance, Madhav Gadgil stood out as a notable exception, recognising it as aligned with the scientific approach, spirit of openness, and choosing to actively engage in improving it. He was among the very few Indian public intellectuals of his stature to engage directly with the Wikimedia movement, participating in outreach and other activities.

He engaged with Wikimedia communities and supported efforts to improve ecological and scientific content in Indian languages. He participated in outreach workshops in various Indian states including Maharashtra, Kerala, Goa, and Telangana, promoting contributions to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikisource. He advocated the re-licensing of scientific and environmental literature under free licences, released several of his own books under CC BY-SA for digitizing them on Wikisource, and supported digitisation initiatives that enriched Marathi Wikisource. He also encouraged the use of public datasets, including census data, to improve village-related content on Indic-language Wikimedia projects which resulted improvement of 25,000 village articles on Telugu Wikipedia.

Subodh Kulkarni, his close associate in the environmental movement and later an active Marathi Wikimedian, has noted Gadgil’s sustained encouragement of and support for the Wikimedia movement in India.

"Madhav Gadgil was a pioneering advocate for knowledge democratization, championing the role of grassroots communities in open platforms like Wikimedia. He envisioned these projects as vital "Citizen Science" tools for documenting local environmental data, biodiversity, and traditional wisdom, such as folksongs and folktales. By recording observations on issues like illegal mining and river health, Gadgil believed local communities could provide critical insights that formal science often overlooked. He envisaged these digital repositories to serve as a medium for social audits, holding authorities accountable through transparent, community-led data.
To support this vision, Gadgil collaborated extensively with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and various civil society organizations to scale awareness. He spearheaded thematic content generation & digitization drives and led by example by donating his own published works to Wikimedia Commons under open licenses. His influence successfully persuaded numerous authors and institutions to embrace the relicensing process, significantly expanding the Indian public domain. Furthermore, Gadgil served as a hands-on resource person for Wikimedia workshops across Maharashtra, Goa, Telangana, Karnataka, and Kerala. His sustained engagement effectively bridged the gap between professional scientific expertise and grassroots documentation, leaving a lasting legacy in the open knowledge movement."