26th November Gazette Notification exempting 190 species from the NBA

[KANNA KUMAR SIRIPURAPU]

Dear All,

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

[e-mail]

[KANNA KUMAR SIRIPURAPU]

Dear Butyraj, thank you for your response hope you have sent a cc to Bhargavi S.Rao too! This is good piece of information. I'm sure Bhargavi S. Rao would appreciate it. Thank you for the information.

[Buntyraj]

Hi

Its true some plants are excluded in new assessment, as they had undergone wide spread cultivation eg Pterocarpus santalinus, Aquilaria malaccensis in DRAFT August 2007: For discussion at South East Asia workshop, prepared and produced by: UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK. And new species are added.

Trading of threthened species is contemplated to the source of the product. For exporting, the source should be from cultivation and not from wild and should be certified, according to CITES norms.

The Botanical survey of India has listed the Indian threathened plants and available in the official websides. For statewise evaluation, regional bodies like FRLHT will assess species in different categories of IUCN performing CAMP assessment. FRLHT mainly highlight species of medicinal values and available in official websides

with regards
Bunty Raj