Globally Threatened Indian Fauna:

India has a rich and varied heritage of biodiversity, encompassing a wide spectrum of habitats from tropical rainforests in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to alpine vegetation and dry alpine scrub high in the Himalayas and from temperate forests to coastal wetlands. Between the two extremes, the country has semi-evergreen rain forests, deciduous monsoon forests, thorn forests, and subtropical pine forests in the lower montane zone and temperate montane forests. Since the Indian sub-continent lies at the confluence of African, European and Indo-Malayan realms the biota, therefore, includes African, European, and Eurasian and Mediterranean elements.

India contributes significantly to this latitudinal biodiversity trend. India is a one of the twelve mega biodiversity countries of the world. With a mere 2.4% of the world's area, India 18 accounts for 7.25 % of the total global fauna (12, 21,315) ( with a count of 89,451 species (Alfred, 1998).

The present paper deals with the conservation status of globally threatened Indian fauna that has been red listed by IUCN. The tables providede also incorporates the red listed species that have been included in the various schedules of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, appendices of the Conventions on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and fauna (CITES) and appendices of Convention of Migratory Species (CMS).

India contains 648 species of animals listed as “Globally Threatened” by IUCN (2004) which is approximately 8.91%; of the world's total number of threatened faunal species (7266 species} The 648 Globally Threatened Indian species includes 213 Species of Mammals,149 Birds, 33 Reptiles, 148 Amphibians, 75 Pisces and 30 Invertebrate species. Of the 648 Threatened Indian Species 183 species are endemic It significantly makes 29.01% of the threatened Indian fauna, which is a very high ratio and the threats to the endemic species are a cause of concern. While there are tremendous efforts to conserve the threatened fauna world over there has been remarkable decline in the population trends as evident from the Table 6. Out of the 648 threatened Indian species we have the trends available for 447 species only, of which 218 species are showing downward trend while 217 species are indeterminate. Only eleven species have the stable population while, to speak towards upward trend we have only one species of mammals namely, Megaptera novaeangliae- a Bunch which is under vulnerable category.