Summary:
Coimbatore: The Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Board will prepare People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBR) in the next six to eight months, its secretary A Udhayan said PBR is a list of all local biological resources within a block. So, we are first teaching the rangers how to form a biodiversity management committee, including the fact that it needs to have seven members and how they can recruit members,” said Udhayan. “The register has to be prepared and maintained by the committees, which will be instituted in every block in every district across the country,” Udhayan told TOI.A biodiversity register in every block is mandatory under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.While the committees are getting formed, the state government's biodiversity board has created a software in which the data for biodiversity registers across the state has to be keyed in. It will also have comprehensive information on their extent of availability and knowledge of each species’ use if any, including medicinal and traditional.The state government has instructed biodiversity management committees in the state to enrol volunteers from colleges to collect and key in data. “In Tamil Nadu, the state government has decided that the forest rangers will be BMC secretaries..