Mammals of western ghats: A simplistic overview

Abstract

Being one of the 25 hotspots of the world, Western Ghats is a storehouse of endemic flora and fauna, whose endemicity increases with decreasing body size. Mammals are well represented in this chain of mountains with 137 species of which 16 are found no other place on earth. This paper presents a thorough checklist of mammals of Western Ghats along with the status (according to the 1994 IUCN Red List Criteria) of the taxa in Western Ghats (if endemic) or in India/overall distribution (if found outside of Western Ghats). The paper summarises the impacts of human activities within the hotspot as indicated by the level of threat faced by the endemic mammalian taxa. Thirty-two mammals threatened globally or in India occur in Western Ghats, while there is not enough information to assess the status of 22 mammals. Of the 16 endemics, 13 are threatened in Western Ghats.