Deep inside Arunachal Pradesh’s forests lie thousands of plant species that science hasn’t fully seen yet — and the Governor wants that to change, fast.
A Meeting That Could Shape Conservation for Decades
On Sunday, Governor KT Parnaik sat down with Botanical Survey of India (BSI) Director Dr Kanad Das at the Lok Bhavan in Itanagar — and the conversation went far beyond pleasantries. Parnaik pushed hard for comprehensive botanical surveys across remote and lesser-explored corners of the state, especially in areas that were simply unreachable in the past due to poor road connectivity. Now that infrastructure is slowly opening these regions up, he argued, science needs to walk through those doors before it’s too late. BSI Arunachal Regional Centre scientist-in-charge Dr Krishna Chowlu was also part of the discussion.
Numbers That Should Stop You in Your Tracks
Think about this for a moment. Arunachal Pradesh is home to over 5,000 flowering plant species, around 600 orchid species, 75 rhododendron species, and hundreds of medicinal plants. That’s not a forest — that’s a living library. The Governor highlighted these staggering figures to make a point: conservation efforts must grow alongside development, not lag behind it. Losing even a fraction of this biodiversity quietly, without documentation, would be an irreversible tragedy.
The Orchid Paradise Push
Arunachal is already known as India’s “Orchid Paradise,” hosting nearly 40 percent of the entire country’s orchid diversity. That’s a remarkable distinction. Parnaik recommended establishing a dedicated botanical garden, creating community orchid conservation areas, and expanding ex situ conservation through tissue culture and orchid rescue programmes. These aren’t just nice ideas on paper — they’re the kind of on-ground interventions that can actually prevent species from disappearing before anyone even gets to study them.
A Blueprint for the Future
The Governor didn’t stop at orchids. He called for launching a “dedicated rare, endangered and threatened species recovery programme” — one that would combine GIS mapping, population monitoring, seed banking, and habitat restoration, all in collaboration with the Forest Department and local communities. He also urged the BSI to build a real-time digital flora database and an ecological monitoring system to track how climate change is already reshaping Arunachal’s plant landscape. More scientific personnel on the ground, he said, is non-negotiable.
Why This Matters Now
There’s a window here, and it won’t stay open forever. As roads push deeper into once-inaccessible valleys, habitats face new pressures. What the Governor is asking for is essentially a race against time — map it, protect it, involve communities in guarding it, and build systems that keep watch even when no one is looking. Arunachal’s botanical wealth is not just a state asset. It belongs to the world. And right now, much of it remains unnamed, unstudied, and dangerously close to being lost.
HASHTAGS
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