Western Ghats is the most important treasure house of our national biological resources. It houses over four thousand species of plants of medicinal and other economically important uses. A large set of these plant resources are still being harvested from the wild populations along the Western Ghats and unfortunately we do not yet have any clear idea of the extent to which these natural populations can withstand such indiscriminate harvesting. It is important to have an assessment of the existing status of the natural stands of these plant resources, their geographic distribution and population structure such that it would be possible to evaluate the levels of threats if any, and to arrive at sustainable levels of harvesting and to develop working plans for the forest resources. Further it is also essential to document and develop distribution maps of the plant resources to protect our sovereign rights and to judiciously allocate these rights to the genuine owners. The project aims at a first ever systematic attempt towards a fine scale quantitative assessment of the plant resources, mapping their distribution, and documenting the population levels of these plant resources based on exhaustive field data along the Western Ghats.
The specific objectives envisaged are as follows:
1. Quantitative assessment of Plant Resources,
2. Assessment of Threats to Plant resources, and,
3. Development of Western Ghats Eco-region specific database on plant resources
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