Nicobar islands declared a world biosphere reserve by Unesco

LONDON: The highly threatened Nicobar islands of India - home to 1,800 animal species and some of the world's most endangered tribes, has now been designated as a world biosphere reserve.

The island is home to the indigenous Shompen people, semi-nomadic hunters living inland and the Nicobarese, who are coastal dwellers dependent on fishing and horticulture.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal are an archipelago of approximately 527 islands, islets and rocks. This underwater mountain range manifests itself above water as a chain of emerald islands of exceptional beauty and conservational importance. The islands’ immense biological diversity is a result of ocean boundaries enclosing a wide range of ecosystems - open oceans, shallow seas and reefs, sandy beaches, rocky shores and sea caves, mangroves and wetlands, littoral forests, giant lowland evergreens and hill top forests on this 6000sq km land.

Source : TOI