Study Area

The Western Ghats along with Sri Lanka constitute one of the 34 global biodiversity hot spots (Myers et al. 2000; Mittermeier et al. 2005). It harbours forests of varied kinds such as, tropical evergreen, semi-evergreen, moist and dry deciduous types.  These forests in many places, because of human impacts through last few millennia have produced secondary kinds of vegetation such as savannah, scrub and grasslands (Pascal 1988). Uttara Kannada is one of the forested districts of central Western Ghats in the state of Karnataka, India. Sacred groves are present throughout the district, under various management systems and in different states of maintenance.   The current study is concentrated into 5 km X 5 km area (140 16' 48'' – 140 18' 36'' N latitude and 740 50' 24'' -740 54' 00'' E longitude) (Fig. 1) in eastern part of Siddapur taluk of Uttara Kannada district. The undulating landscape here is characterised by rice fields and small areca nut (Areca catechu) gardens interspersed with grassy plains, scrub, degraded secondary forests, monoculture tree plantations and small sacred groves. Rice crop is mainly rainfed and vegetables, ginger and millets are optional crops during dry seasons grown in small portions of the rice fields. The tree plantations mainly consist of the exotic Acacia auriculiformis and Casuarina equisitifolia.

Figure 1: Location of sacred groves and forest patch (dark shaded polygons) in the study area