Butterflies of Garhwal, Uttarakhand, western Himalaya, India

Abstract

Thirty percent of butterfly species that occur in India are found in the Garhwal region of the western Himalaya, which comprise six districts of Uttarakhand State with five major vegetation types lying between the catchments of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. The annotated checklist compiled here for this region comprises 407 species and takes into account all the species recorded since 1899, when the first list of 323 species was prepared by Mackinnon & de Nicéville on the ‘butterflies of Mussoorie and its adjacent areas’. Over a 20 year period (1986–1990; 2000–June 2015) the present authors maintained detailed notes and were able personally to record 349 species. This information is presented in a checklist, together with details of the month, year and site of each record, relative abundance, Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (IWPA) status, as well as references of earlier records made by other authors in Garhwal for those species that the authors were not able to record themselves. Forty-nine species recorded in the region have been placed under various schedules of IWPA; only one species, the Golden Emperor Dilipa morgiana Westwood, is listed in Schedule I Part IV, the others being mainly included under Schedule II Part II. The paper also discusses new range extensions and significant records (past and present), identifies major biotic factors that threaten butterfly diversity in Garhwal, and suggests the scope for butterfly ecotourism in the state as an option for long term conservation.

Keywords

• Conservation planning
• ecotourism
• Lepidoptera
• moist temperate forest
• oaks
• protected species
• tropical moist deciduous forest
• western Himalaya.