DH News Service BANGALORE, July 28 A team of students from University of Agricultural Sciences, Hebbal, have been awarded the British Petroleum (BP) Conservation International Award for 2003 for their project on Conservation of the Myristica Swamps. The team is led by Bhausaheb Tambat and Ravikanth G working with Professors R Uma Shankar and K N Ganeshaiah. The team at UAS is one among the 32 successful awardees out of 360 applicants who competed for the award worldwide. Mr Tambat received the award including a research grant of US $ 10,500 recently at the American Museum of Natural History in New York from Prof Jeffrey Sachs, economist and Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. The award will be used to study the Myristica swamps, one of the unique ecosystems in the Western Ghats - a global mega diversity hot spot in India. Located in low-lying, poorly drained depressions, these swamps once formed and extensive network along the Western Ghats. However, due to human interventions, the swamps today are highly fragmented and are threatened. These swamps are the only sites of occurrence of certain members of the ancient family Myristicaceae, which remain poorly studied. The team will undertake field work beginning September 2003 with assistance from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Karnataka Forest Department and Dr R Vasudeva, Forestry College, Sirsi. They would map the network of swamps in the central Western Ghats and assess the relative threats to the swamps. Based on these studies, they plan to identify and prioritise the species that merit conservation attention and propose plans for restoration and conservation of the swamps and their species.ÿ