Current Affairs

According to the data tabled by Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in Lok Sabha, 4 species of fauna and 18 species of flora have gone extinct in India in the past few centuries. It also informed that India is home to 6.49% of all the fauna species and 11.5% of all flora species in world. According to International Union for Conservation Of Nature (IUCN), a new study has shown that since 1750, more than double the number of plants have disappeared from the wild than birds, mammals and amphibians combined.

Fauna extinction in India:

• Four mammals have extinct in India: Cheetah (Acionyx jubatus), Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensisi), Pink-headed duck (Rhodonessa caryophyllaceai) and  Himalayan quail (Ophrysia supercililios). It should be noted that four these four animals can be found in other parts of the world.
• Factors that led to these extinctions: Competition, predation, natural selection, and human induced factors like hunting, habitat degradation.

Flora extinction in India

18 species of plants — 4 non-flowering and 14 flowering — have gone extinct in India. Notable among them are three species from genus Ophiorrhiza (Ophiorrhiza brunonis , Ophiorrhiza caudate and Ophiorrhiza radican ), all discovered from peninsular India and Lastreopsis wattii , a fern in Manipur discovered by George Watt in 1882, Corypha taliera Roxb, a palm species discovered in Myanmar and Bengal region by William Roxburgh.