India has compiled a comprehensive checklist of its entire fauna, encompassing 1,04,561 species, making it the first country in the world to achieve this milestone. This is available on the "Fauna of India Checklist Portal" which was launched on the 109th Foundation Day of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) in Kolkata on Sunday by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav. On the occasion, he emphasised that this first comprehensive document on India's faunal species will position the country as a global leader in biodiversity documentation.
The faunal checklist is intended to be an invaluable reference for taxonomists, researchers, academicians, conservation managers, and policymakers. It comprises 121 checklists covering all known taxa across 36 phyla. The list also includes endemic, threatened, and scheduled species, providing a detailed account of the country's biodiversity.
"Since the 1750s, or the time of Carl Linnaeus (the 18th-century Swedish naturalist often called the Father of Taxonomy and whose system for naming, ranking and classifying organisms is still in wide use) and the present, we have had over 1 lakh different species. The portal will have details on each of them," he said.
The Minister also released a list of animal and plant species discovered in India last year. More than 600 animal and more than 300 plant species were discovered in India last year, said ZSI officials.
"This is a first-of-its-kind exercise in the world. Some other countries may have separate compilations of mammals, amphibians or insects. But India is the first country in the world which has prepared a complete list of fauna documented from the country," said Dhriti Banerjee, director of ZSI while talking about the checklist
"While India accounts for only two per cent of the planet's land mass, it accounts for 7.5 per cent of the world's biodiversity. We are a remarkably bio-diverse country, especially when you take our population density into account," said Banerjee, the first woman to lead India's umbrella institute for biodiversity studies.
A ZSI official said more than 100,000 species have been reported from India till now.
The ZSI will also work with the Ghana Wildlife Society on a conservation project for pangolins, Banerjee said.
The ZSI is collaborating with the Natural History Museum to have a common digital archive. An MoU was signed in 2021 between the two institutions to "work together to collect, study and conserve faunal specimens for science and to create and exchange associated data and images".
This checklist will serve as a critical tool for ongoing and future efforts in understanding and protecting the nation's rich and diverse wildlife, said the official.
