Floristic Composition and Nativity Analysis: Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary

Biological invasion is considered as a significant contributor to the human-driven global environment change that has resulted in loss of native biodiversity and alteration in different aspects of the functioning of invaded ecosystems. Present work aimed at understanding the trend of intrusion of alien flora in a dry tropical region of a protected area, the Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary, located in the midst of rapidly urbanizing five districts of Uttar Pradesh in India. Survey visits to the sanctuary were carried out during the period 2021-2023 and species list was compiled with the help of recorded flora and other published works and each species was assigned its nativity. Out of a total of 591plant species distributed over 106 families, 62% were aliens and only 38% flora were natives. Highest alien flora were of American biogeographic origin (26%), followed by Asian (21%), African (7%), European (5%) and Australian (3%). The dominant families included Poaceae, Fabaceae and Asteraceae, Malvaceae and Cyperaceae comprising 43.1% of total flora recorded. Herbaceous were maximum in number (71%), followed by tree (14%), shrub (10%) and climber (5%) flora. The study revealed increasing trend of intrusion of alien flora, predominated by the flora of American and Asian biogeographic origin, into the protected area of Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary. Thus, this study has implication for necessary management measures against the naturalizing, colonizing and invasive alien weeds in protected areas, especially across urbanizing anthropo-ecosystems in Indian dry tropics.