Western Ghats: Native habitats reduced to one-third and hydrological regulation disrupted, says review article

The Western Ghats, the most densely populated global biodiversity hotspot, not only harbours 30% of India’s plant and animal species, but is a “museum” of ancient plant and animal lineages and a “cradle” of more recently evolved species, endemic to the region.

Yet, two centuries of plantation expansion, dams, roads and infrastructure development, now compounded by climate extremes, accelerating invasive species spread, and urbanisation and infrastructure, have reduced native habitats to one-third of their original extent, disrupted hydrological regulation critical to peninsular India’s water security, and driven range contractions among narrow-ranged endemics, says a new review article published on Wednesday in Nature Reviews Biodiversity.

The article, “Biodiversity origins, threats and conservation in the Western Ghats” is authored by Kamaljit S. Bawa, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Jahnavi Joshi, Ayyappan Narayanan, Kiran Mathramkot Chandrasekharan, and Lokesh Bagepalli Subramanyam. from the Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India/Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, Ghaziabad, India, Department of Ecology, French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), UMIFRE 21 CNRS-MEAE, Puducherry, and Geo-spatial Laboratory, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru, respectively.

Incidentally, the review is dedicated to the late Madhav Gadgil amid the deeply divided debate over the conservation measures for the Western Ghats, including provisions of the Gadgil and Kasturirangan committee reports and the Centre’s latest draft notification on the proposed Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) in the Western Ghats.

Threats