Prioritizing Suitable Habitat for the Cultivation and Conservation of the High-Value Medicinal Tree Rhus chinensis in Sikkim, Eastern Himalaya, India

Wild edible fruits (WEFs) are often underutilised and overlooked due to limited knowledge of their traditional medicinal uses and nutritional value. Among many WEFs, R. chinensis has a long history of use in ethnomedicinal practices among indigenous peoples of Northeast India. The present study highlights the use of ecological modelling tools to identify suitable habitats for R. chinensis in the Sikkim Himalaya. Among the input variables, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and soil water stress for January together accounted for 49.6% of the model output, underscoring the importance of fruiting phenology in species distribution. Of the total predicted area, most falls within the very low suitability class (74.2%), followed by low (9.37%), moderate (7.55%), high (5.51%), and very high (3.34%). These results indicate that very little area is suitable for R. chinensis in Sikkim. The species is primarily found at lower elevations in the Sikkim Himalaya, where extensive development activities, including road widening, threaten its natural habitat. Additionally, most of the highly suitable predicted regions fall outside protected areas, posing an additional risk of future population decline. Therefore, to safeguard the existing population of R. chinensis, the identified suitable protected areas should be prioritised for in situ conservation, thereby preserving the traditional knowledge associated with the species.