Exotic trees eating up Western Ghat’s grasslands

Exotic trees eating up Western Ghat’s grasslands

News:

Western Ghats lost almost one-fourth high-altitude grasslands due to invasion of exotic trees.

Important Facts:

• Most of this loss occurred on the mountain tops of the Nilgiri, Palani and Anamalai hill ranges, which comprise more than half of the Ghat’s shola-grassland ecosystems.
• The satellite images revealed that 60% of the shola-grassland landscape has changed and almost 40% of native high-elevation grasslands have disappeared.
• The loses are primarily due to the expansion of exotic trees (pine, acacia and eucalyptus).
• Shola-grassland ecosystems in Tamil Nadu showed the highest rates of invasion of exotic trees
• Even though no plantations were established between 2003 and 2017, invasion by existing trees increased areas under exotic plantations by 27% in the Palanis and 17% in the Nilgiris.

About Shola Grassland:

• Shola forests are tropical Montane forests found in the valleys separated by rolling grasslands only in the higher elevations.
• The shola forests are patches of forests that occur only in the valleys and never grow on the mountain tops. This is such a unique landscape formation that is native only to the southern Western Ghats.
• The Shola forests are found in altitudes above 2000 meters of sea-level. Although they are found from altitudes higher than 1600 meters.
• Rivers originate in the sholas: Tunga Bhadra, Nethravathi, Cauvery etc.
• Shola forests are a native only to the Southern Western Ghats. They are found only in the high altitude mountains of the states Karnataka, Kerala and Tamilnadu. Nowhere else in the world exist such a kind of forests.
• The endangered Nilgiri tahr (an Asian goat-antelope) is endemic to the shola-grassland.