The only sound you can hear from the Rainforest Resort overlooking the Athirampilly Falls is of water plummeting down the mountains and joining gurgling streams. It was a heady experience to watch the Chalakudy river crashing down on hard granite rocks and breaking into a cloud of foamy spray in the lush landscape of the Sholayar range.
The threats facing Ecuador's Yasuní National Park are emblematic of those confronting the greater western Amazon, one of the world's last high-biodiversity wilderness areas. Notably, the country's second largest untapped oil reserves—called “ITT”—lie beneath an intact, remote section of the park. The conservation significance of Yasuní may weigh heavily in upcoming state-level and international decisions, including whether to develop the oil or invest in alternatives.
Various mining projects have been proposed in the Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra. The proposed mining area seeks to destroy about 200 sq km. in the Western Ghats part of the Sawantwadi and Dodamarg blocks of the district in the core of the northern Western Ghats.
To save biodiversity, on-the-ground agencies need to set the conservation research agenda, not distant academics and non-governmental organizations, argue Robert J. Smith and colleagues.
The Eastern Himalayan region has been proposed as another National Agricultural Biodiversity Heritage Site, based on six indices. The region is the richest in species diversity among the northeastern states of India. It is the center of diversity for several widely distributed plant taxa and a crucible for speciation encompassing several primitive familities.
Based on six indices, the warm subhumid to cool-humid Western Himalayan Region, consisting of the Kashmir valley, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, could be designated as an Agricultural Biodiversity Heritage Site. This region is rich in agro-biodiversity, with a large number of species being cultivated.
Silent Valley is home to many rare species like the Lion-tailed Macaque and Ceylon Frogmouth. Being untouched by man, it also contained many unaltered gene pools kep intact since time immemorial. The Government of Kerala, in a moment of recklessness, decided to destroy these pristine forests by building a hydro-electric project to generate a fefw megawatts of power.
High taxonomic level endemism in the Western Ghats-Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot has been typically attributed to the subcontinent's geological history of long-term isolation.
