During his research on forest fragmentation, he showed how a single research question can require diverse expertise and lead to inter-institutional collaborations. He developed a perspective to study lion-tailed macaques in forest fragments for their ecology, population dynamics, behaviour, reproductive biology, parasite status, and genetics, involving different experts from various organisations. This work has become a model to study fragmented populations of many other species in the Indian forests, specifically in the Western Ghats.

His years at the Wildlife Institute of India (1988-1992) were formative for the institution. He built its early computing facility and taught a generation of researchers to handle ecological data with rigour but backed by sound biological understanding. He led landscape-scale studies in the Kalakkad-Mundanthurai and Anamalai hills that widened the field’s attention beyond large mammals to reptiles, amphibians and small mammals.

One thing he cared for most was teaching. He joined the Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS) in 2003 to lead the Master’s Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, serving as its founding director from 2004 to 2020, and guided hundreds of students through it. His students remember him for encouraging hard questions, developing independence, and giving students the confidence to find their own answers. Many of them describe his patience, his humour and his refusal to judge, and most remained in touch with him long after their degrees were done.

He was a long-standing and strong supporter of this journal and served on its editorial board from its founding until his death. He was handling ‘Asian Elephants in Central India: A Detailed History (From the Earliest Times to 1947)’ by Raza Kazmi as editor and helped shape the submission into the first monograph published by this journal. He was at work on it in his last months, giving generously of his time and judgement as he always did. He was, above all, a teacher and mentor to many. The journal honours his memory through this work.