Ethnobotanical Study of Koundinya Wildlife Sanctuary; Andhra Pradesh, India (Research Article)

Author(s): S. K. M. Basha*, M. Johnpaul and P. Siva Kumar Reddy

Abstract: Koundinya wild life Sanctuary in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh located in the 12o 39’-13o 10’ N and 78o 29’-78o.52’ E falls in the hill ranges of the Eastern Ghats, a broken and discontinuous line of mountains in peninsular India. Koundinya wildlife Sanctuary is linear in Shape, running ca.70 km north to south. The breath varies from 1 to 15 km. It occupies 357km2.It has a periphery of about 224km with 53 fringe and 8 enclosure villages and is bordered by reserve forest of Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu. The Sanctuary comes under two ranges: Palamaner in the north and Kuppam in the South. Palamaner range has four blocks: Tekumanda, Musalimadugu, Mordana and Nelipatla. The Kuppam range has six blocks: Naikaneri, Peddanaikdurg, Charagallu, Peddur Extension, Peddur and Kangundi. The main water resourses in the Sanctuary consists of the River Palar, its tributaries the Mallatar (or Kaigal) and Koundinya, from which the Sanctuary gets its name. The vegetation comprises predominantly of Southern Tropical Dry Mixed Deciduous (Champion and Seth 1968) with trees of Hardiwikia binata Chloroxylon swietenia, Albizia amara, Boswellia serrata, Anogeissus latifolia ,Pterocarpus santalinus, Shorea spp, Diospyros spp and Ficus spp. The vegetation varies widely in different areas as result of terrain soil, impact of graging, fires, woodcutting.

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