The Garo Hills butterfly book

 

 

The Garo Hills butterfly book is out : An email thread has already started on this on ButterflyIndia while I was on a field trip to Kerala. I am now back, and here is the information about the book:
 
We have been surveying the wonderful butterfly fauna of the Garo Hills, which forms the north-westernmost tip of the globally recognized Indo-Burmese Biodiversity Hotspot. Following the publication of our research paper on the butterflies of the Garo Hills last year, a book on these butterflies is now out. Please see the attached sample, which gives necessary details such as the title, publisher, content and some sample species accounts/images, which are also given below:

 Title: Butterflies of the Garo Hills
 Authors: Sanjay Sondhi, Krushnamegh Kunte, Gaurav Agavekar, Rohan Lovalekar, and Kedar Tokekar
 Publishers: Samrakshan Trust, Title Trust, and Indian Foundation for Butterflies.
 Number of pages: 200
 Number of species accounts: 324. This is out of the 339 species that had been recorded from the Garo Hills at the time of finalizing the book in March 2013. The missing species are certain Swifts and other Hesperiids that cannot be easily identified in the field.
Number of color images: 521
 Token price: Rs. 500 (Rs. five hundred), plus shipping costs. 20% discount on orders of six copies or more.
 
Copies of the book can be ordered from any one of the following four local distributors/stockers:
 
Samrakshan Trust, Baghmara (Meghalaya): Kamal Medhi (balpakram@gmail.com, 8974-986-223) and Yaranajit Deka (yaranajit.samrakshan@gmail.com, 9402-396-570). Their phones often do not work, so it is best to contact them by email.

 Sanjay Sondhi, Dehradun: sanjay.sondhi1@gmail.com, 9412-052-189.
 
Kedar Tokekar, Pune: tokekark@yahoo.co.in, 9970-167-351.
 
Krushnamegh Kunte, Bengaluru (=Bangalore): krushnamegh@ncbs.res.in, krushnamegh@ifoundbutterflies.org, (080) 2366-6085 (office), -6086 (lab), 9483-525-925 (mobile).

 You can pay for the book by a bank transfer in Samrakshan’s bank account (preferred method) or by cash to one of the above distributors:
 
Account holder name: Samrakshan Charitable Trust ET
 Savings Bank Account Number: 32928955983
 Bank Name: State Bank of India, Baghmara Branch
 IFSC code: SBIN0004885
 CIF Number: 86682627876
 
Please note that the book has been published with generous and full funding from the India Foundation and the Forests and Environment Department, Government of Meghalaya. The authors have decided not to take any royalty and the publishers have decided not to make any money on this book. However, we are selling this book for the token price of Rs. 500, with the understanding that all the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the Garo tribes in the South Garo Hills District of Meghalaya, where we have worked in the past and continue our research. Through the sale of this book we are trying to help Samrakshan Trust generate alternative source of revenue for the Garos from the very biodiverse forests that they hold. Samrakshan Trust has been doing this for several years in various ways to encourage the Garos to keep their forests rather than turn them over to illegal coal miners. Part of this effort is butterfly tourism in the Garo Hills, about which Yaranajit, Kamal or Sanjay can tell you more.

      …, in addition to posting this on the DiversityIndia website/blog, can you please post this on various Facebook, Google and other online groups? Others, feel free to circulate this around wherever you see appropriate.

      I am looking forward to more such surveys and subsequent publications from other serious butterfly watchers and biologists in India. We need current information on our butterflies, we need it to be widely available, and anything we do to popularize butterfly-watching will ultimately help us spread awareness about India’s natural heritage and the need to conserve it. Let Sanjay and I know if you are planning to publish similar research papers and books on Indian butterflies or other taxa, we will certainly be happy to help you with this however we can. 

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