Team:  Rohit George, Aditya Pradhan 

This project, implemented under The Himalaya Initiative’s Biodiversity Monitoring and Conservation Planning programme, focuses on establishing a long-term butterfly monitoring programme in Sikkim. Butterflies are ideal indicators of environmental change due to their well-documented taxonomy, ease of identification, ecological sensitivity and role as surrogates for broader biodiversity. 

Our project engages student citizens, particularly in areas experiencing significant human activity. It promotes citizen science as a means to build sustained biodiversity datasets while empowering local communities to participate actively in conservation, as was evident through the workshops conducted across academic institutions in Sikkim, which contributed to initial baseline data.