Morung Express News
Dimapur | July 16
A day long workshop on North East India Biodiversity Portal (NEIBP) was held today at Patkai Christian College, Chumukedima with participants from Nagaland and surrounding areas. Organised by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), the workshop was held in collaboration with the Zoology Department of the college.
The aim of the workshop was to provide an opportunity to researchers, students, conservation practitioners and biodiversity enthusiasts to learn about documenting and disseminating biodiversity related knowledge.
The workshop consisted of a theory session on the various aspects of the India Biodiversity Portal (IBP) after which there was also a field visit around the college campus where participants documented some of the rich biodiversity found here.
During the theory session, Rohit George, of the NEIBP, pointed to the low number of observations/data from the NE despite the region being rich in biodiversity and called on budding researchers to contribute to the portal.
IBP is an innovative, participatory and open access biodiversity information platform for India to address the problem of biodiversity information not freely and openly available. Managed by a diverse group of partner institutions, the portal aims to establish a collaborative information system which will aggregate and integrate an array of biodiversity knowledge available with several entities in order to identify and prioritize conservation of biodiversity in India.
IBP currently has over 16000 records of observation from the North East. Of this, only 1279 are from Nagaland. “There is a lot of data to be collected from Nagaland and the North East,” George said urging the gathering to participate in IBP.
Following the field visit, there was a practical session to get a hands-on experience of the portal.
The organisers expressed hope that the workshop will help facilitate agencies involved in conserving the biodiversity and policy makers to prioritize efforts in conserving species and ecosystems.
