Meghalaya has brought nearly one lakh hectares of forests and natural landscapes under active protection and monitoring through afforestation programmes and its Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) initiative, officials announced on World Environment Day.
Scientists have confirmed that Aquilaria khasiana—a Critically Endangered, agarwood-producing species once thought endemic to Meghalaya—is also found in Assam’s Jeypore Reserve Forest.
Hidden within the rain-soaked forests of Cherrapunjee and Mawsynram — two of the wettest places on Earth — grows a tree found nowhere else on the planet. But today, Pyrenaria cherrapunjeana, an evergreen tree species endemic to Meghalaya, stands at the edge of extinction.
