Conserving Biodiversity Based on Cultural and Religious Values

The rich biodiversity of India com prises multitude of religions, casts and creeds. There are about 68 million people belonging to 227 ethnic groups and 573 tribal communities derived from six racial stocks in the country (Pushpgandhan, 1994). Plant diversity is the basis of life for all living creature, it has great economic and environmental importance. The forests have been the lifeline for forest dwelling communities since time immemorial. The people who have traditionally lived in forests are key to understanding, utilizing and conserving the plant diversity. These indigenous tribes live close in the vicinity of forests with harmony in nature and have managed and conserved the biodiversity of their ambient vegetation since prehistoric and historic period subsequently, they developed their own cultures, religions, customs, taboos, folk-tales, food, medicines and large num ber of other plants for multifarious uses on which they depended for most of their essential requirements. This vast repository of knowledge related to plants has been cared, nourished and conserved by the tribal communities as a common property since thousands of years by experience, trial and errors, and it is also being freely transmitted from generation to generation by means of oral communication.