Valmik Thapar, one of India’s most persistent voices for wildlife conservation and tiger protection, died Saturday at his residence in New Delhi after a battle with cancer. He was 73.
Over the past five decades, Thapar had emerged as an authority on India’s wild tigers, particularly those in Rajasthan’s Ranthambore National Park.
The author of nearly 50 books, Thapar co-founded the Ranthambhore Foundation, appeared in documentaries, advised successive Indian governments on tiger conservation, and took part in over 150 policy panels and task forces, including the National Board for Wildlife.
Thapar’s journey into the wild was born not out of any scientific training. In his early twenties, when he was a documentary filmmaker, Thapar boarded a train to Ranthambhore.
There, with the help of park director Fateh Singh Rathore, a mentor who had shaped the original Project Tiger, Thapar saw his first wild tiger. They called her Padmini.
Over the next several decades, Thapar developed a bond with Ranthambore’s tigers.
His relationship with Padmini, and later her descendants, Noon, Machli, Krishna, and Arrowhead, formed the basis of his research, advocacy, and visual storytelling on tigers.
In the 2023 BBC documentary My Tiger Family, Thapar reflected on his favourite tigresses, calling Krishna’s litter of four cubs “an event that shook my being.”
Machli, one of the most iconic tigresses of Ranthambore, survived a poaching crisis and passed on her lineage to over 75 per cent of the park’s current tiger population.
“Her DNA survives in 75 per cent of Ranthambore’s 70 tigers,” Thapar once said, highlighting the success of one of his favourites, a matriarch in difficult times.
“In 1992, I said that the tiger will not survive. I hope I will never have to make such statements again,” he told journalist Lalitha Sridhar in an interview, in 2012. “Fortunately, very, very fortunately, I was wrong.”
Thapar was unflinching in his views on tiger conservation. He argued that optimism, not realism pushed the idea of coexistence.
He remained firm that tiger conservation required hard boundaries. In a dissenting note to the 2005 Tiger Task Force, set up after tigers vanished from Sariska, Thapar criticised the panel’s faith in human-tiger coexistence.
Thapar argued that for tigers to survive in the long run, certain areas needed to be kept free from human interference. He said that a minimum area should be managed exclusively in its natural form for a tiger.
Thapar saw a deep political will in past decades.
He had, multiple times credited former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for laying the foundation of India’s environmental protection framework... halting hunting, banning fur exports, launching Project Tiger, and spearheading the Wildlife Protection Act and the Forest Conservation Act.
“Whether it is the DMK, the AIADMK or the BJP, they will have to follow the laws that Indira Gandhi made and that Rajiv Gandhi made,” he said. “Thank God they happened because otherwise we would not have had one inch of forest land left today.”
He also credited the Supreme Court for stepping in when political will faded. From 1995 onwards, he noted, the court passed over 200 orders and interim rulings, banning timber cutting, halting sawmills, and protecting the Western Ghats. “If this had not been done by the Supreme Court, again, there would have been nothing.”
He advocated for reviewing forest laws, empowering forest officers, and involving citizens. “We do need to review the laws, forest officers are only supposed to defend themselves and they are dealing with the most dangerous criminals,” he said.
His death prompted tributes from political leaders and conservationists alike.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh called it a “great loss,” noting on X.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge described Thapar as “a man whose work laid the groundwork for India’s current environmental legislation”.
Conservation biologist Neha Sinha called him "the international voice of Indian tigers for many many years".
Wildlife conservationist Nirmal Ghosh remembered him as "a giant of tiger conservation" who leaves behind "a lasting legacy as a global spokesman for the tiger."
“The tiger overwhelms me,” Thapar once said. “I know nothing else.”
Last year, The Guardian reviewed his documentary ‘My Tiger Family’. I t noted, “Even the most cursory reading of his Wikipedia entry alone suggests that he should be the subject of at least one documentary himself, but My Tiger Family remains firmly focused on those he loves.”
My Tiger Family aired on BBC is available on BBC iPlayer