Forestry in India and Wildlife of India
Biodiversity
Main articles: Forestry in India and Wildlife of India
A 1909 map showing India’s forests, bush and small wood, cultivated lands, steppe, and desert.
A 2010 map showing India’s forest cover averaged out for each state.
India is a megadiverse country, a term employed for 17 countries which display high biological diversity and contain many species exclusively indigenous, or endemic, to them.[183] India is a habitat for 8.6% of all mammal species, 13.7% of bird species, 7.9% of reptile species, 6% of amphibian species, 12.2% of fish species, and 6.0% of all flowering plant species.[184][185] Fully a third of Indian plant species are endemic.[186] India also contains four of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots,[58] or regions that display significant habitat loss in the presence of high endemism.[j][187]
India’s forest cover is 701,673 km2 (270,917 sq mi), which is 21.35% of the country’s total land area. It can be subdivided further into broad categories of canopy density, or the proportion of the area of a forest covered by its tree canopy.[188] Very dense forest, whose canopy density is greater than 70%, occupies 2.61% of India’s land area.[188] It predominates in the tropical moist forest of the Andaman Islands, the Western Ghats, and Northeast India.[189] Moderately dense forest, whose canopy density is between 40% and 70%, occupies 9.59% of India’s land area.[188] It predominates in the temperate coniferous forest of the Himalayas, the moist deciduous sal forest of eastern India, and the dry deciduous teak forest of central and southern India.[189] Open forest, whose canopy density is between 10% and 40%, occupies 9.14% of India’s land area,[188] and predominates in the babul-dominated thorn forest of the central Deccan Plateau and the western Gangetic plain.[189]
