RAIPUR: In a major push to safeguard its botanical heritage, the Chhattisgarh State Biodiversity Board convened a crucial two-day technical brainstorm exercise in Raipur on Tuesday.
The high-level consultation aims to finalise the state's official list of Rare, Endangered, and Threatened (RET) plant species and design targeted recovery roadmaps for 127 vulnerable taxa.
The initiative operates under Section 38 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, which empowers states to notify and protect species facing extinction risk.
While Chhattisgarh is home to 3,035 recorded plant species that sustain local livelihoods and indigenous medicine, rapid ecological pressures have placed 127 of them under severe threat.
The sessions stand out for their integrated methodology, which aligns modern taxonomic rigour with grassroots traditional knowledge. Following Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) set by the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), scientists, taxonomists, and indigenous traditional healers (vaidyas) are jointly reviewing herbarium specimens, field data, and ethnobotanical records to assess wild populations, geographical distributions, and specific threat vectors.
Amitabh Bajpai, Member Secretary of the Chhattisgarh State Biodiversity Board, highlighted during the opening session that building a robust conservation framework requires bridging academic research with ground-level insights from forest-dwelling communities.
Addressing the gathering, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) and Head of Forest Force (HoFF) Arun Kumar Pandey stated that conservation cannot succeed in isolation and stressed the collective call for forest heritage.
"The responsibility of conserving threatened plant species in the state must be taken by all of us together; only then will we be able to save our invaluable heritage of biodiversity," Pandey said.
The convention brought together key officials and domain specialists, including State Forest Research and Training Institute Director Kaushlendra Kumar, Minor Forest Produce Federation General Manager Sanjita Gupta, APCCF Somdas, and Premkumar.
The technical proceedings will culminate on Wednesday with the formalisation of the state's comprehensive rare, endangered and threatened plant inventory. Once finalised, this scientific baseline will pave the way for an official state gazette notification, the creation of species-specific habitat recovery programmes, and binding sustainable-harvesting protocols to prevent over exploitation in the wild.
Key contributions were elucidated by the Board's Subject Expert Committee—including Dr ML Nayak, Dr Rajendra Prasad Mishra, Dr Ajit Hundait, Dr S.R. Patel, and Dr. Bhavana Dixit—alongside senior researchers Dr Dakshnamoorthy and Dr. Noori from the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), Bengaluru.
