The Western Ghats (Sahyadri)

1.1 How far do the Western Ghats stretch, and through which states?

The Western Ghats, also called the Sahyadri, run along India’s western coast for about 1,600 kilometres. They cross six states: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.

1.2 What is the range’s highest point?

Anamudi, in Kerala, is the highest peak of the Western Ghats, standing at 2,695 metres. It’s also the highest point in India south of the Himalaya.

2.1 If it isn’t a fold mountain, what is it?

Unlike the Himalaya or the Aravallis, the Western Ghats aren’t a fold mountain range at all. They’re an escarpment: a steep edge left behind when a landmass cracked and dropped away.

Roughly 88 to 90 million years ago, India separated from Madagascar as the old supercontinent Gondwana kept breaking apart. The land here didn’t fold upward. It faulted and dropped toward the sea, leaving the Ghats standing as the raised edge of what stayed behind.

2.2 Why does one side flood while the other stays dry?

During the southwest monsoon, the Ghats block rain-bearing clouds. Moist air rises up the western, windward slope, cools, and drops most of its water there. By the time that same air crosses the crest and sinks toward the plateau, it has already dried out.

3.1 How rich is the range’s plant and animal life?

UNESCO designated the Western Ghats a World Heritage Site, recognising them as one of the world’s key biodiversity hotspots. Much of this richness grows as tropical evergreen forest, the kind of forest that needs over 200 centimetres of rainfall a year — the Western Ghats and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are the only two places in India wet enough to support it.

• At least 4,780 vascular plant species, of which 2,180 are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth.
• 1,073 vertebrate species, with 355 endemic to the region.
• About half of India’s amphibian species, and two-thirds of its fish species, live only here.

4.1 What are sacred groves, and do they actually work?

Communities across the Western Ghats have protected small patches of virgin forest for centuries, believing local deities live there. No forest law ever required this. Kerala calls them kavu, Karnataka’s Kodagu region calls them devarakadu, “God’s forest,” and Maharashtra calls them devrai.

5.1 Where is the one real break in the Ghats, and how did it form?

Near Palakkad in Kerala, the otherwise near-continuous Western Ghats open into a genuine gap, about 32 kilometres wide, sitting at roughly 140 metres elevation — low enough for a road and railway line to pass straight through. It lies between the Nilgiri Hills to the north and the Anaimalai Hills to the south.

Geologists trace the gap to the same India-Madagascar rifting that built the Ghats as an escarpment in the first place. Madagascar’s own Angavo Escarpment fits against this gap almost like a puzzle piece.

6.1 Why do the Nilgiri tahr and lion-tailed macaque struggle to survive?

The Palakkad Gap also lets monsoon winds punch through to the rain-shadowed interior, and it splits the Nilgiri tahr, a wild mountain goat, into two genetically distinct populations that rarely, if ever, mix. The tahr lives only on the Western Ghats’ steep grassy cliffs, and nowhere else on Earth.

The lion-tailed macaque survives only in the range’s oldest, undisturbed rainforest patches, feeding mainly on fruit. Its IUCN status is Endangered, and fewer than 4,000 remain in the wild. Both species need one specific, shrinking habitat type — when that habitat fragments, a species with nowhere else to go simply runs out of room.

7.1 What stopped Kerala’s Silent Valley dam?

In 1970, Kerala’s electricity board proposed damming the Kunthipuzha river inside Silent Valley, an untouched evergreen rainforest in Palakkad district, to generate 240 megawatts of power. From 1973, the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad, a people’s science movement, led the campaign against it, after local communities first raised the alarm. This grew into one of India’s first major grassroots environmental campaigns.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi intervened in 1980, and the project was finally scrapped in 1983. Silent Valley became a National Park in 1984, and now forms part of the larger Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.

8.1 How did the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports differ?

In 2010, the government set up the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, led by ecologist Madhav Gadgil. Its 2011 report marked about 60% of the range as the highest-priority Ecologically Sensitive Zone. A second panel, led by K. Kasturirangan, reviewed that report and recommended a smaller Ecologically Sensitive Area, covering about 37% of the range.

Gadgil’s report leaned toward strict environmental protection. Kasturirangan’s tried to better balance conservation against development pressure on the people living there.

9.1 What does the 2026 Eco-Sensitive Area draft propose?

On 27 July 2026, the Centre reissued its Eco-Sensitive Area draft notification for the Western Ghats, proposing 56,825.7 sq km across all six states the range crosses. Karnataka’s proposed share is largest, at 20,668 sq km, followed by Maharashtra at 17,340 sq km, Kerala at 9,993.7 sq km, Tamil Nadu at 6,914 sq km, Goa at 1,461 sq km, and Gujarat at 449 sq km.

This is the seventh such draft since Kasturirangan’s original 2013 recommendation. Even at 56,825.7 sq km, it’s still smaller than Kasturirangan’s own 59,940 sq km figure, the same tug-of-war this article’s report section covers.

9.2 What new amphibian was found in the Western Ghats?

• In September 2026, scientists described Gegeneophis chandgadi, a new caecilian from Chandgad in Kolhapur district.
• Caecilians are legless, burrowing amphibians. People often mistake them for earthworms or snakes.
• It was found in farms and village land, outside any protected forest.
• India has 41 caecilian species. Of 12 Gegeneophis species, 11 live only in the Western Ghats.

(Source: The Hindu)