Sahyadri e-news is CES-ENVIS's quarterly newsletter, covering the issues related to Western Ghats biodiversity. Western Ghats is rich in diversity of life. Due to unplanned developmental activities, its ecological resource base is under threat, with extensive destruction of natural habitats, widespread degradation of ecosystems and a growing burden of air and water pollution. Simultaneously, knowledge base of uses of biodiversity is also being eroded, with the present generation becoming increasingly alienated from the natural world.

We need to carefully plan on conserving, sustainably using and restoring the biological diversity of the Western Ghats. We also need to conserve and benefit from the knowledge of uses and the traditions of conservation of this biological diversity. Also, we must ensure that benefits flowing from our heritage of biodiversity and related folk knowledge percolate down to the people at the grass-roots.

The Western Ghats has maximum number of crustose lichens represented by 618 taxa followed by foliose and fruticose with 269 and 62 species respectively. The Nilgiri Biosphere area of Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu has been better explored for lichens while other localities remain under explored. Hence, among different states Tamil Nadu has the highest number of lichens with 657 taxa followed by Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra with 336, 288 and 91 taxa respectively. The lichens recorded from Goa are included under Maharashtra as they are few in number, while no records from Gujarat are available. In case of Tamil Nadu most of the lichens are from Nilgiri and Palni Hills. The article, Status of Lichen Diversity in Western Ghats by Sanjeeva Nayaka & D K Upreti., enumerates the occurrence of 949 taxa of lichens in Western Ghats with high percentage of endemism (26.7%), which is highest for any Lichenogeographic regions in India.