Conservation

Conservation is the deliberate set of management strategies used to protect India's biodiversity — germplasm conservation, in-situ methods, ex-situ methods and in-vitro methods — applied because the country's exceptional diversity of life forms, a product of its varied topography, geology and climate, is now under mounting pressure from the environmental issues covered elsewhere in this chapter. In-situ conservation protects species within their existing natural habitat, and is used especially for threatened forest trees and medicinal/aromatic plants; it is carried out either by local communities (through culturally protected sites such as sacred groves) or by the state, through legally protected wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and biosphere reserves — Tamil Nadu's own examples include the Megamalai and Sathyamangalam wildlife areas, Guindy and Periyar national parks, and the Western Ghats, Nilgiris, Agasthyamalai and Gulf of Mannar biosphere reserves. Sacred groves specifically are community-protected forest patches tied to religious belief (each typically the seat of a village deity such as Aiyanar or Amman); 448 have been documented across Tamil Nadu, with six studied in detail, and they deliver watershed protection, fodder, medicinal plants and microclimate regulation to their surrounding communities. Ex-situ conservation instead protects species outside their natural habitat, through botanical gardens, zoological parks, and tec …