Governor KT Parnaik has called for comprehensive botanical surveys in the remote and lesser-explored regions of Arunachal Pradesh to document and protect the state's rich plant diversity.

During a meeting with the Botanical Survey of India, he highlighted the state's over 5,000 flowering plant species, around 600 orchid species, 75 rhododendron species, and numerous medicinal plants. He stressed the need to balance development with conservation and proposed a dedicated recovery programme for rare, endangered and threatened species through GIS mapping, population monitoring, seed banking, and habitat restoration.

His suggestions for deploying more scientific personnel, establishing botanical gardens and community orchid conservation areas, expanding tissue-culture and orchid rescue programmes, and creating a digital flora and climate-change monitoring network to strengthen long-term ecological protection and community participation should be well taken.

The governor can guide the state, join hands with local communities and start a monitoring cell, as infrastructure development is directly affecting the ecology.

Sitting on a fragile ecology, Arunachal has to be extra cautious as well as prepared, which calls for the involvement of all the stakeholders.