Lesson 3 of 12 · 5 min
Biodiversity of India
NCERT §13.1.1
The register form from the forest office has a heading, 'India's share', and Rohan has to fill in two percentages.
The lesson in notes
In short
India covers just 2.4 per cent of the Earth's land, yet it holds 8.1 per cent of the world's species diversity.
That share places India among the world's 12 mega diversity countries.
About 45,000 plant species have been recorded from India, and roughly double that number of animal species.
By May's global estimate, only 22 per cent of all species have been recorded so far.
Applying that proportion to India's lists, probably over 1,00,000 plant species and over 3,00,000 animal species are still undiscovered and undescribed.
Finishing this inventory would need a great many trained taxonomists and a long time, and many species may go extinct before they are ever found: nature's biological library is burning before its books are catalogued.