Prioritizing Suitable Habitat for the Cultivation and Conservation of the High-Value Medicinal Tree Rhus chinensis in Sikkim, Eastern Himalaya, India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55863/ijees.2026.1003Keywords:
Distribution, ENM, Protected area, Population assessment, Rhus, WEFsAbstract
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.
References
Adhikari, D., Reshi, Z., Datta, B.K., Samant, S.S., et al. 2018. Inventorying and characterising new populations through ecological niche modelling improves threat assessment. Current Science. 114: 519–531. https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv114%2Fi03% 2F519-531
Bhusal, M., Sharma, K., Magar, A.B., Pant, J. and Sharma, K.R. 2024. Chemical analysis and biological activities on solvent extracts from different parts of Rhus chinensis Mill. Natural Product Research 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/14786419.2024.2387831
Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) & IUCN SSC Global Tree Specialist Group. 2018. Rhus chinensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2018:e.T135819132A135819134. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T135819132A135819134.en. Accessed on 02 December 2024.
Chettri, A., Pradhan, A., Sharma, G., Pradhan, B.K. and Chhetri, D.R. 2018. Habitat distribution modelling of seabuckthorn (Hippophae salicifolia D. Don.) in Sikkim, Eastern Himalaya, India. Indian Journal of Ecology 45: 266–269.
Chitale, V.S., Behera, M.D. and Roy, P.S. 2014. Future of Endemic Flora of Biodiversity Hotspots in India. PLoS ONE 9(12): e115264. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115264
Djakpo, O. and Yao, W. 2010. Rhus chinensis and Galla Chinensis—folklore to modern evidence: review. Phytother Res. 24(12. https://doi.org/10.1002/ptr.3215
Halladay, P. and Gilmour, D.A. (Eds.). 1995. Conserving Biodiversity Outside Protected Areas: The role of traditional agro-ecosystems. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, and Cambridge, UK. pp.viii+229.
Joshi, R.K., Satyal, P. and Setzer, W.N. 2016. Himalayan Aromatic Medicinal Plants: A Review of their Ethnopharmacology, Volatile Phytochemistry, and Biological Activities. Medicines (Basel). 3(1):6. https://doi.org/10.3390/medicines3010006
Kumar, M. and Pandit, M.K. 2019. Identifying conservation priorities for plant species in the Himalaya in current and future climates: A case study from Sikkim Himalaya, India. Biological Conservation. (233): 176-184 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.02.036.
Pearson, R.G., Raxworthy, C.J., Nakamura, M. and Peterson, A.T. 2007. Predicting species distributions from small numbers of occurrence records: a test case using cryptic geckos in Madagascar. J. Biogeogr. 34: 102e. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01594.x.
Phillips, S.J., Anderson, R.P. and Schapire, R.E. 2006. Maximum entropy modelling of species geographic distributions. Ecol Model 190:231–259 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmode l.2005.03.026.
Phillips, S.J. and Dudík, M. 2008. Modelling of species distributions with MaxEnt: new extensions and a comprehensive evaluation. Ecography 33: 607–611. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0906-7590.2008.5203.x
Pradhan, A and Chettri, A. 2017. Identifying Protected Areas Suitable for Conservation of Cycas pectinata Buch. Ham. in Southeast Asia Under Climate Change Scenario. International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, 43(2), 129-135.
Rai, L.K., Prasad, P. and Sharma, E. 2000. Conservation threats to some important medicinal plants of the Sikkim Himalaya. Biol. Conservation 93: 27–33.
Sharma, G. 2016. Report on Tradable Bio-resources of Sikkim, Sikkim Biodiversity Board, Forest, Environment and Wildlife Management Department, Government of Sikkim, India, pp. 222.
Sharma, G., Pradhan, B.K., Chettri, S.K., Chettri, A. and Chettri, D.R. 2019. Indigenous knowledge and phytochemical screening of medicinal chuk from Rhus chinensis, Docynia indica, and Hippophae salicifolia in Sikkim Himalaya. Indian Knowledge of Traditional Knowledge 18(2): 250–260.
Sloyer K.E., Burkett-Cadena N.D., Yang, A., Corn, J.L., Vigil, S.L., McGregor, B.L., Wisely, S.M. and Blackburn, J.K. 2019. Ecological niche modelling the potential geographic distribution of four Culicoides species of veterinary significance in Florida, USA. PLoS One, 14(2):e0206648. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206648
Sundriyal, M., and Rai, L.K. 1996. Wild edible plants of Sikkim Himalaya, J. Hill Res., 9: 267–278.
Trabucco, A. and Zomer, R.J. 2019. Global Aridity Index (Global Aridity) and Global Potential Evapotranspiration (Global-PET) Geospatial Database. CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information. published online, available from the CGIAR-CSI Geoportal at https://cgiarcsi.community/data/global-aridity-and-pet-database/
Vitor, H.F.G., Stephanie, D.I., Niels, R., et al. 2018. Species Distribution Modelling: contrasting presence-only models with plot abundance data. Sci. Rep. 8:1003. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18927-1
Wang, H.H., Wonkka, C.L., Treglia, M.L., Grant, W.E., Smeins, F.E., Rogers, W.E. 2015. Species distribution modelling for conservation of an endangered endemic orchid. AoB Plants 7:e039. https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plv039
Warren, W.L., Glor, R.E., Turelli, M. 2010. ENMTools: a toolbox for comparative studies of environmental niche models. Ecography 33: 607–611 https://doi.org /10.1111/j.16 00-0587.2009.06142.x
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Aditya Pradhan, Bijoy Chhetri, Arun Chettri
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
