Tag : Mahendragiri

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has declared Mahendragiri hill in Gajapati district as biodiversity heritage site to preserve local habitats rich in plants and animal life. "The government has been pleased to declare an area of 4250 hectare of Mahendragiri covering two reserve forests (Idongiri and Mahendra) in the district of Gajapati under forest division of Parlakhemundi as the second biodiversity heritage site of Odisha," read a notification issued by the Forest, Environment & Climate Change (FE&CC) department. Notably, Mandasaru Gorge area, spread over 544 hectares in Kandhamal district is Odisha's first such heritage site, notified in 2016. The state government has declared the new biodiversity heritage site on the recommendations of the Odisha Biodiversity Board. Mahendragiri hill, located 1000 metre above mean sea level, is one of the biological, ecological and archaeological important mountain ecosystems in Odisha. As per the notification, the hill ecosystem acts as a transitional zone between flora and fauna of Western Ghats and the Himalayan biogeographic zones making the region an ecological estuary of genetic diversities. With increased altitude, the hill complex demonstrates several micro climatic conditions like tropical shola, tropical semi-evergreen, tropical moist-deciduous & tropical dry deciduous. The diversified vegetation with rich floral diversity represents 40 per cent of the reported flora of Odisha. A total of 1,358 species of plants including 1,042 species of angiosperms under 122 families, 60 species of pteridophytes, 104 species of bryophytes, 53 species of lichens and 72 species of macro-fungi and 2 species of gymnosperms occurring in the hill ecosystem. In terms of botanically curious plants, 44 ...