Status Distribution And Conservation Of Birds In South Western Region Of Deccan Maharashtra With Reference To Globally Threatened And Endemic Grassland Birds Of India

Abstract

Biodiversity is the variety of life on the earth; the number of species of plants, animals, microorganisms and enormously diversified genes in these species. Biodiversity is the source of all biological wealth, providing a wide range of goods and services worth many billion dollars per year. The services provided by biodiversity include ecosystem development; decomposition, recycling of nutrients, soil maintenance, self purification and climate regulation (Hosetti 2002). Biodiversity plays many vital environmental and developmental roles that are not accorded economic value but are crucial to human future (Khan 1998). Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the relative ecological health of habitats (Huston 1994). newlineHuman population is dependent on biodiversity in many ways and it has been exploiting the biodiversity resources since its evolution. Increase in human population, combined with advancements in technology to rapidly extract biodiversity resources to fulfill many needs and the greed of humankind has resulted into the extinction of many habitat and thereby, species and many more are becoming threatened each passing day. Climate change, pollution and harmful human activities are pushing species into declining populations to critical levels and destruction of essential habitats. We are moving towards the phase of mass extinction by losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1,000 times faster than the natural extinction rate (IUCN 2001). newline