The status and distribution of freshwater biodiversity in the Western Ghats, India
The Western Ghats is one of the world’s most heavily populated biodiversity hotspots providing for and supporting 400 million people. However, these diverse freshwater ecosystems face many threats because of untrammelled economic development. In most instances the development planning process does not consider the requirements of these freshwater ecosystems, mainly due to a lack of adequate information on the distribution and status of freshwater species and the threats they face. For this reason, the Western Ghats Freshwater Biodiversity Assessment was conducted to review the global conservation status and distributions of 1,146 freshwater species belonging to four taxonomic groups: fishes, molluscs, odonates and aquatic plants.
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