A gazette notification of 26th November 2009 exempts 190 plant species from the purview of the National Biodiveristy Act 2002 if traded as commodities (that is for exports). Many of the plants on this list are threatened. The notification is on the NBA website -Biological Resources notified as normally traded commodities under section 40 of BD Act, 2002 http://www.nbaindia .org/notificatio n.htm
Also this list has been prepared in-transparently without a due process and many senior government officials, state biodiversity boards are not aware of it.
The fact that India trades value added products such as spices, resins, coffee seeds etc is acceptable but are we trading Banyan and Peepal trees? In addition are we trading threatened plants such as Chlorophytum borivilianum and many others. We did compare it with the threatened list on the NBRI website and found that many of them match.
To confirm this, those of you who are well informed about the threatened plants of India, can you please throw some light on this and if possible help identify the threatened plants on this notification or send/give a link to a list of an updated threatened plant species. It will be most helpful.
Looking forward to your comments,
Warm Regards,
Bhargavi S.Rao
bhargavi_srao@yahoo.com
