In the food web, herbivores are established to play an important role in maintaining the ecological health of an ecosystem by consuming a sizeable quantity of available vegetation. With the evolution of biodiversity conservation theory, grazing and browsing of herbivores has been generally treated as an unsustainable practice for long-term conservation of wild flora.

The "rice culture" of Kerala is fast vanishing due to the increasing diversion of the land for non-agricultural purposes. The real estate sector is gradually swallowing up the rice cultivating low-lying wetlands. This paper attempts to examine the growth of real estate business and consequent destruction of the wetland ecosystems in the state.