Biodiversity of Maharashtra

Threads to Biodiversity (for world) Extinction is a natural event and, from a geological perspective, routine. We now know that most species that have ever lived have gone extinct. The average rate over the past 200 my is 1-2 species per year, and 3-4 families per my. The average duration of a species is 2-10 million years (based on last 200 million years). There have also been occasional episodes of mass extinction, when many taxa representing a wide array of lifeforms have gone extinct in the same blink of geological time. In the modern era, due to human actions, species and ecosystems are threatened with destruction to an extent rarely seen in earth history. Probably only during the handful of mass extinction events have so many species been threatened, in so short a time. Biodiversity refers to the number and variety of species, of ecosystems, and of the genetic variation contained within species. Roughly 1.4 million species are known to science, but because many species a

Maharashtra is a unique state. It has a great variety of ecosystems, a wide range of flora and fauna and a large variety of indigenous crops. These biological assettes are of great economic social and environmental value. The rich biodiversity spread over Maharashtra is now threatened by the state’s rapid and unsustainable economic development. Maharashtra’s biodiversity is protected in its National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries to a great extent. However, outside these Protected Areas the threat to biological assettes continues to grow. While there are Acts to protect wild species and our forest resources in these Protected Areas outside these Areas, biodiversity can be preserved only if the people of Maharashtra see its importance and begin to preserve it for our future generations. Maharashtra has always undertaken challenges that seemed impossible to achieve. But these have been metand even exceeded. I am sure that with the help of our citizens – tribal communities, rura