Introduction

Forest ecosystem plays a pivotal role in shaping up human civilization through different means among which religious or cultural association has major role.  The protection of forest / forest patch from cultural perspective has often lead to long lasting contribution to the community associated with it, a fact which has been acknowledged widely only recently. From biological point of view, the culturally protected forest/forest patches (popularly known as Sacred groves/forests) supposed to be native / primary vegetation of the area as human intervention is minimum due to religious or social taboos, thus any alteration is least expected. However, the notion of representation of original vegetation or relics of the past is a subject of local management and peoples’ attitude towards the system.

Identification and demarcation of relic forests is a difficult task in view of rapidly changing land use pattern in the region. Without having any prior information on its ecological characters or any other mode of documentation the task seems to be a strenuous one to demarcate the patch from surrounding full grown forest or other land use types. Often, the patch itself is disturbed at various levels leading to confusion to reveal its true characteristics. Therefore, local traditional knowledge, historical documents and scientific expertise are prerequisite for this type of work. Present day relic patches are heterogeneous in their distribution and size. Their distribution ranges from heavily modified landscape to forested area and similarly they could be cluster of trees to few hundred hectares of land.  It is their diverse spatial extent and surroundings which influence ecological characteristics of the relic patches. Although the small patches do not have much deterministic role in major ecological functions, they are effective enough to maintain the integrity at species level. On the other hand, large patches because of their dimensions influence local ecosystem functions to certain extent along with conservation of biological diversity. A wide range of interaction can be studied at both micro and macro level ranging from species to ecosystem leading to understand the complex natural processes at different scales.

Uttara Kannada, one of the forest dominated districts in Karnataka state is bestowed with relic forests of different magnitude. The ecological history of the region corresponds with the origin and distribution of the relic forests in the area (Chandran 2005, Chandran et al 2010). Relic forests have been identified from the evergreen forest area, Myristica swamp even from agricultural landscape. Studies have already pointed out their importance in local biodiversity conservation however, their ecological and ecosystem dynamics are yet to be explored in detail. The current paper presents a brief overview of the importance of these relic forest patches at species and ecosystem level citing examples from central Western Ghats region to illustrate the phenomena and contemporary issues challenging the age old tradition.