‘Gregarious bamboo flowering’ in WWS a threat to wildlife

The ‘gregarious flowering of bamboo’ inside the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (WWS) and the nearby Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and Gudalur forest division in Tamil Nadu may pose a threat to wildlife in the Nilgiri biosphere, a major tiger and elephant habitat.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2021

Bamboosa bambos is a monocarpic (flowering only once) plant belonging to the Poaceae family (grass family), and its flowering cycle varies from 40 to 60 years.

Bamboosa bambos is also known as the giant thorny bamboo, Indian thorny bamboo, spiny bamboo, or thorny bamboo.

It is a species of clumping bamboo native to southern Asia.

It is a tall, bright-green coloured spiny bamboo species, which grows in thickets consisting of a large number of heavily branched, closely growing culms.

The bamboo groves in the Wayanad forest are the mainstay of herbivores in the Nilgiri biosphere during summer.

With the advent of the season, migration of wild animals starts from the adjacent sanctuaries in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to Wayanad due to shortage of fodder and water.

The gregarious flowering may adversely affect migration, especially by elephants, wild gaur, and other lower herbivores owing to the mass destruction of bamboo groves after the flowering.