City-based NGO Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF) in collaboration with the Institute for Conservation Research, San Diego Zoo Global in the US, will take up research projects on conservation in Western Ghats. The research centre will come up in Sangameshwar, in Ratnagiri district. The conservation projects will focus on community-based approach programs that will benefit the locals in Western Ghats. The focus of the research projects will be on north Western Ghats which consists of highly endemic areas of plant species and terrestrial vertebrate species of the world. The environment education will be a master’s course on conservation biology that will start in 2014. It will be for 10 months involving both field work and theory. Jayant Sarnaik, deputy director of AERF, pointed out that deforestation in the Western Ghats has an impact on the environment hence there is a need to save old forests and conserve these habitats. The various research projects will focus on habitat conservation. By protecting the habitat, we will actually conserve the animal and bird species.
