The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve: where two biotic realms meet in the Western Ghats
Background
Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve exemplifies the tropical forest biome and lies within the Western Ghats system, which represents the confluence of Afro-tropical and Indo-Malayan biotic zones.
UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme records both its surface and its total terrestrial area as 552,000.00 ha.
Major parts of the core areas in Kerala and Tamil Nadu include evergreen, semi-evergreen, moist deciduous, montane sholas and grassland vegetation types, while the core area in Karnataka contains mostly dry deciduous forests.
These ecosystems occur from hilly terrain to meadows extending from 300–2,670 m.
It houses about 3,500 species of flowering plants, of which 1,500 are endemic to the Western Ghats.
The fauna consists of over 100 species of mammals, 550 species of birds, 30 species of reptiles and amphibians and 300 species of butterflies.
Faunal elements needing protection include the tiger, the elephant, the gaur, the lion-tailed macaque and the Nilgiri tahr.
Economic activities are strictly forbidden in the core, only a few activities are permitted in the buffer zone, and the transition area is occupied mostly by private agricultural enterprises and degraded forests.
In plain words
Shola Shola forest — A patch of stunted montane evergreen forest that sits in the folds of high grassland in the Ghats.
Endemic Endemic species — A species found naturally in one region and nowhere else.
Biosphere reserve zonation Core, buffer and transition zones — The three rings of a biosphere reserve, allowing progressively more human use outward from the core.