Critically EndangeredGiant Clam
Tridacna gigas
Asia
India is one of the seventeen megadiverse countries in the world and contains four biodiversity hotspots: the Himalaya, the Western Ghats, the Indo-Burma region and the Nicobar Islands. From the ice of the Himalayan summits to the reefs of the Indian Ocean, it strings together conifer forests, Terai grasslands, the Thar desert, monsoon forests, laterite plateaux and the largest mangrove forest in the world, the Sundarbans, where tigers swim between channels and drink brackish water. The country holds most of the planet's wild tigers, two thirds of Indian rhinoceroses and almost all of the wild Asian elephants. The Western Ghats, a range running parallel to the southwest coast, catch the monsoon and concentrate a very high number of amphibians and plants found nowhere else.
National animal: The Bengal tiger is the national animal, the peafowl the national bird, the Asian elephant the national heritage animal and the Ganges river dolphin the national aquatic animal
The Asiatic lion once ranged from Greece to India, but by the start of the twentieth century barely a few dozen were left, all of them in the Gir forest in Gujarat, where the local nawab banned hunting and protected them on his own land. From that handful of survivors descends the only wild population in the world, which today exceeds six hundred animals and is still confined to that same region.
Project Tiger, launched in 1973, created a network of reserves that has allowed the tiger population to grow to some three thousand six hundred animals, the largest in the world. The gharial, a crocodile with a very fine snout specialised in fish, remains critically endangered despite the breeding programmes.
Kaziranga between November and April for rhinoceroses. Ranthambore and Bandhavgarh between March and May for tigers at the waterholes. The Western Ghats during the monsoon for amphibians.
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Same region: South Asia
Same region: South Asia
Same region: South Asia
Same region: South Asia
373 species found
Based on what we already know about India.
