Nature Interpretation Sites: A New Hope of Ex-situ Garden for Conservation and Cultivation of Economically Important RET MAPs in Higher Himalayan Regions

Abstract

The Himalayan mountain ecosystem offers a wide range of goods and services to humanity, benefiting both mountain dwellers and non-mountain dwellers. Mountain ecosystems play a crucial role in maintaining the hydrological cycle with feedback to regional climate and by modulating the runoffs regime, along with this mountain vegetation and soil play a significant role in lowering or mitigating risks from natural hazards. This is especially true of the great Himalaya, which serves as a rich source of hotspots of biodiversity. From a social perspective, mountains are of global significance as key destinations for tourist and recreational activities. Many alpine medicinal and aromatic plants are threatened by increased anthropogenic pressures in the Upper Himalayan region, pushing them closer to the endangered category. Aconitum heterophyllum Wall. ex Royle, an economically valuable medicinal plant native to the Himalayas, is now designated as endangered on the IUCN (2020) red list. It is one of many economically valuable medicinal plants that are now included in the RET category. Hence, a new Nature Interpretation Site was built at Baniyakund, Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand at 2460 m asl in the 2016–2020 timeframe in order to conserve related Rare, Endangered, and Threatened (RET) species. A number of RET alpine medicinal and aromatic plant species have had their germplasm preserved there, along with some other ex situ gardens.