Arunachal Pradesh, being a largest state of Northeast India, harbours great number of plant species which are endemic to region. The diversity and endemism of state has kept it in the category of biodiversity hot-spot. Though, in recent past, numbers of plant species are being listed as rare, endangered and threatened because of increasing threats from anthropogenic and other natural factors.

An attempt has been made to identify folklore medicinally important plants frequently used by rural communities of sacred groves and it environs of Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu. A total of 34 medicinal plants from 33 genera under 29 families were enumerated. Most of the plants are used for curing earache, skin diseases, fever, cold, headache, cough, urinary disorder, ulcer, etc.

Orans are a source of food fodder, water and fuel to the livestock communities living in the foothills of Aravallis. Local communities, with the support of KRAPAVIS, an NGO continue to uphold the beneficial practice of preserving Orans.

Sacred groves are (small or large) patches of vegetation of varying sizes, conserved on the basis of the religious beliefs of the community. In India 13,720 sacred groves have been identified from 19 states and named differently in various parts of India as Law lyngdhoh in Meghalaya, Kovil Kadu in Kanyakumari, Dev Bhumi in Uttarakhand, etc.

On a global scale, the existing Sacred Groves (SGs) follow ancestral worship on conservation in forest patches. SGs are distributed over a wide ecosystem and help in conservation of rare and endemic species. Well preserved SGs are store houses of biological, ecological, medicinal, ethno-cultural and religious values.

The Gonds, like all aboriginal people, are animistic, for whom nature, from where they derive all their sustenance, is everything, hence a power to pray to and also appease.