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Karnataka
Deforestation hits plant diversity in Western Ghats
By M.Raghuram
MANGALORE, DEC. 7. The plant diversity in the Western Ghats is under threat of degeneration due to widespread deforestation. The area covering Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Kodagu, Chikmagalur, Hassan, and Shimoga districts is one of the major plant diversity regions in the world. Thanks to the timber lobbies, this region is fast losing its plant diversity. As a result, India is slipping from its position of being one of the top 12 mega-plant diversity regions in the world.
The Western Ghats and the Eastern Himalayas are two of the 25 hot spots of plant diversity in the world. Concern expressed by botanists and experts indicate that if the region is allowed to degenerate any further, several endemic species, including medicinal herbs and plants, will vanish.
The Western Ghats harbour different types of vegetation such as scrub jungles, dry and moist deciduous forests, grasslands and sholas, and precious tropical evergreen and semi-evergreen forests. Of the estimated 17,000 flowering plant species in India, 4,500 species are found here which include endemic, rare and endangered species, as well as scores of economically-important ones, and wild relatives of cultivated plants. The southern areas in particular have the richest gene pool in the region, according to two researchers from Mangalore University, Mr. B.V.Shetty and Dr. K.R.Chandrashekar.
The research papers produced by them on bio-diversity and bio-technology, and plant diversity in the Western Ghats reveal the rich plant diversity and endemic medicinal plants available there.
Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Shetty said a third of the 4,500 species of plants in the Western Ghats were endemic to the region, and a third of such endemic species were rare and threatened. The forests of the Western Ghats were a veritable storehouse of economically-important species including trees that yielded timber and firewood, fibres such as bamboo and rattan, and food items such as edible fruits, nuts, spices, and condiments. There were a number of extractive products including gums, resins and oleoresins, tans and dyes, essential oils, and medicines. The region was also a rich repository of genetic resources, including several wild relatives of cultivated plants including paddy, finger millet, pearly millet, sugarcane, pepper, turmeric, ginger, nutmeg and so on. These wild relatives played a vital role as gene sources in plant breeding programmes. The wild species - Saccharm Spontaneum, for example - was extensively used in breeding superior varieties of sugarcane, Mr. Shetty said.
But all this was now in danger. According to an article appearing in ``Current Science,'' Prof. C.S.Jha and two others have pointed out that due to deforestation for 22 years from 1973, the southern Western Ghats had lost 25.6 per cent of forest cover in a study area of 40,000 sq. km., which, according to the researchers, was the highest so far. The study was based on satellite imaging.
Mr. Shetty said the danger to this plant diversity was further enhanced due to indiscriminate timber extraction, over-exploitation of bamboo resulting in large tracts of bamboo breaks being wiped out, conversion of forests to alternative land use such as raising plantation crops including coffee, tea, rubber and cocoa, and multi-purpose river valley projects, human activity including intentional burning of seasonally-dry forests, slash and burn cultivation, wood gathering and grazing, and growth of population inside the forests.
The danger to the medicinal plants appeared to be grave as the Western Ghats were a treasurehouse of over 8,000 ethnic and endemic varieties belonging to 386 botanical families. This accounted for one-fourth of the world's medicinal plants (30,000) used in different medicinal systems, according to the all-India Co-ordinated Ethnobiological Research Project. The project observed that southern Western Ghats had most of these species in them.
The southern Western Ghats are being used as a corridor for the Mangalore-Bangalore HPCL petroleum pipeline and the Kudremukh Iron Ore Mining Project. With the ``Save Western Ghats movement'' now showing signs of weakening, botanists had begun to wonder if the conservationists were cracking up faster than they should have, Mr. Shetty added.
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