FAUNAL BIODIVERSITY AND ENDEMISM OF SOUTHERN WESTERN GHATS
The Western Ghats, known locally as the Sahyadri Hills, are formed by the Malabar Plains and the chain of mountains running parallel to India's western coast, about 30 to 50 kilometers inland. They cover an area of about 160,000 km² and stretch for 1,600 kilometers from the country's southern tip to Gujarat in the north, interrupted only by the 30 kilometers Palghat Gap. The Western Ghats mediates the rainfall regime of peninsular India by intercepting the southwestern monsoon winds. Dozens of rivers originate in these mountains, including the peninsula’s three major eastward-flowing rivers. The wide variation of rainfall patterns in the Western Ghats, coupled with the region’s complex geography, produces a great variety of vegetation types. These include scrub forests in the low-lying rain shadow areas and the plains, deciduous and tropical rainforests up to about 1,500 meters, and a unique mosaic of montane forests and rolling grasslands above 1,500 meters. Blessed with an abundance of life forms found nowhere else on earth, Western Ghats endemics include high-profile Lion-tailed Macaque and Nilgiri Tahr. Scientists of various organizations cataloguing endemics of this region estimate that there are 90 amphibians, 89 reptiles, 17 birds, 23 mammals, 1600 flowering plants and a lot more are found here only and nowhere else on earth
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