Pride of Western Ghats

The Western Ghats, also known as Sahyadri (Benevolent Mountains), are a mountain range that covers an area of 140,000 square kilometres (54,000 sq mi) in a stretch of 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) parallel to the western coast of the Indian Peninsula, traversing the states of Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka,  Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is one of the eight "hottest hot-spots" of biological diversity in the world. It is sometimes called the Great Escarpment of India. It contains a large proportion of the country's Flora and Fauna, many of which are only found in India and nowhere else in the world. According to UNESCO, the Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas. They influence Indian monsoon weather patterns by intercepting the rain-laden monsoon winds that sweep in from the south-west during late summer. The range runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain, called Konkan, along the Arabian sea. A total of thirty-nine areas in the Western Ghats, including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and reserve forests, were designated as world heritage sites in 2012 – twenty in Kerala, ten in Karnataka, five in Tamilnadu and four in Maharashtra.

Fauna of Western ghats

                         There are at least 139 mammal species.of the 16 endemic mammals, 13 are threatened. Among the 32 threatened species are the critically endangered malabar large-spotted civet, the endangered lion-tailed macaque, Nilgiri tahr, Bengal tiger and Indian elephants, the vulnerable Indian leopard, Nilgiri langur and gaur. Most endangered species of Western ghats are listed below,

Tiger

  Lion-tailed Macaque

   Asiatic Elephant

        Nilgiri tahr

Indian Gaur

Flora of Western Ghats,

                       Of the 7,402 species of flowering plants occurring in the Western Ghats, 5,588 species are native or indigenous and 376 are exotics naturalised, 1438 species are cultivated or planted as ornamentals. Among the indigenous species, 2253 species are endemic to India and of them, 1273 species are exclusively confined to the Western Ghats, Apart from 593 confirmed subspecies and varieties, 66 species, 5 subspecies and 14 varieties of doubtful occurrence are also reported, amounting  to 8,080 taxa of flowering plants. 

Thank You