Kerala State Biodiversity Board Begins India’s First-Ever Red List Assessment of Ecosystems

Key facts

• The Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB) has launched India’s first Red List Assessment of Ecosystems (RLE) project, a one-year initiative to shift conservation from species-focused efforts to landscape-wide ecosystem management.
• The project is funded by KSBB and jointly executed by the Kerala Forest Research Institute and the Centre for Ecology, Taxonomy, Conservation and Climate Change at MES Asmabi College, led by Dr. Amitha Bachan K.H. and Dr. Deepu Sivadas.
• Keralam’s tropical riparian evergreen forests in the southern Western Ghats have lost 83% of their extent over the past century due to dam construction, invasive plantations and climate extremes, earning a Critically Endangered status under IUCN criteria with potential collapse in 20 to 40 years.
• The assessment will evaluate ecosystem collapse risks across all 14 districts of Keralam using the five standardized criteria of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems framework, establishing the State’s first standardised baseline of historical loss, habitat fragmentation and hydrological disruption.
• Myristica swamps, high-altitude shola-grassland mosaics and coastal mangroves face similar threats from rapid urban expansion and rising sea levels.
• The project will produce an official Risk Register, an Ecosystem Typology Atlas and ecorestoration priority maps, to be integrated into State planning portals and used by local Biodiversity Management Committees and panchayats.
• Dr. N. Anil Kumar, KSBB chairperson, said the goal is to build empirical evidence of environmental degradation, and a red list of species is being assessed simultaneously.