Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot Karnataka

The Western Ghats mountain range running parallel to the west coast of India for 1,600 kilometers through Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, and Gujarat is recognized as one of the eight hottest hotspots of biodiversity on earth, with over 5,000 species of flowering plants, 139 mammal species, 508 bird species, 179 amphibian species, and 288 freshwater fish species, more than 325 of them endemic to the Western Ghats alone. UNESCO inscribed 39 sites totaling 795,315 hectares of the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site in 2012. The Ghats are the source of forty-three rivers that supply water to 245 million people across peninsular India, including the Krishna, Cauvery, Tungabhadra, Periyar, and Godavari. Karnataka's portion of the Ghats includes the Nagarhole, Bandipur, and Kudremukh national parks, which together with Wayanad in Kerala form the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, India's first biosphere reserve. Soliga and Jenu Kuruba tribal communities have inhabited the Ghats forests for millennia, with traditional forest knowledge of honey collection (jenu means honey in Kannada), herbal medicine, and seasonal gathering of forest products embedded in clan territory management systems. The coffee, cardamom, and pepper plantation economy of the Ghats is dependent on the forest ecosystem for pollinators, water, and climate buffering.