Biodiversity assessment in some selected hill forests of south Orissa, India
Biodiversity is declining seriously on a global scale, underscoring the importance of conservation planning. Except protected areas and reserve forests, scientific studies on biodiversity of special habitats in India are meager like the other areas of the world. Furthermore, extensive surveys of biodiversity have not been conducted for a majority of taxonomic groups and ecosystem types. The situation is the same in tropical region, and only preliminary information on the biodiversity patterns of less well-known organism groups including many lower groups of plants and animals are available. Such a lack of information severely hinders the assessment of the value of existing species, their current status and threats which might facilitate their long term conservation. Documentation, conservation and finding enhancement strategies of biodiversity is considered to be one of the important challenges in present day conservation biology research and policy making process. Their importance is continuously being shown as they are found to be keystone for the sustainability of ecosystem. At the same time so many species of plants and animals are perished in wild before their documentation due to anthropogenic and developmental activities. Keeping in view of the above background the present study was undertaken in some of the hill forests of south Orissa.