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Dehing Patkai National Park in Assam has been recorded as home to 165 butterfly species, including 37 endangered ones, following the 2026 biodiversity survey.
The findings come from the fourth annual Dihing Patkai Biodiversity and Butterfly Trail, held from 28 to 31 July 2026, which documented more than 260 butterfly species across all sites surveyed.
Site counts included more than 60 species at Jaipur in Assam, about 57 in the Deomali range of Arunachal Pradesh's Tirap district, about 68 at Siring Mamoroni in the Lakhipathar range and about 78 in the Saraipung range.
The park covers 234.26 sq km across Assam's Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts and protects tropical wet evergreen rainforest often called the Amazon of the East.
Capped langurs were also recorded during the survey, which involved students from Gauhati University, Dibrugarh University and Tingkhong College.
Butterflies belong to the order Lepidoptera, which also contains moths. They are short-lived, highly specialised in their host plants and sensitive to changes in temperature, humidity and canopy cover, so a butterfly community responds to habitat disturbance far faster than a population of large mammals does. Ecologists therefore use butterfly counts as an early-warning indicator of forest health: a fall in species richness signals degradation long before it shows up in tiger or elephant numbers. India has more than 1,500 butterfly species and the north-east, where Himalayan, Indo-Chinese and Indo-Malayan elements meet, is the richest zone of all.
Simple Analogy: Butterflies are the canary in the rainforest - small, sensitive and quick to react, so counting them tells you what is happening to the forest before the big animals show it.
Dehing Patkai lies in upper Assam along the foothills of the Patkai range, which forms the boundary with Myanmar, and stretches into Arunachal Pradesh. The survey deliberately crossed that boundary, covering the Deomali range in Arunachal's Tirap district as well as Assam's Lakhipathar and Saraipung ranges, because the rainforest is a single ecological landscape that state borders cut through.
GS Paper III > Conservation, biodiversity and environmental protected areas
General Awareness > Environment and National Parks
General Awareness > Environment Current Affairs
General Awareness > Environment Current Affairs
Which of the following statements is/are correct? Proper design and effective implementation of UN-REDD+ Programme can significantly contribute to 1. protection of biodiversity 2. resilience of forest ecosystems 3. poverty reduction Select the correct answer using the code given below.
Answer: 1, 2 and 3
Due to some reasons, if there is a huge fall in the population of species of butterflies, what could be its likely consequence/consequences? 1. Pollination of some plants could be adversely affected. 2. There could be a drastic increase in the fungal infections of some cultivated plants. 3. It could lead to a fall in the population of some species of wasps, spiders and birds. Select the correct answer using the code given below:
Answer: 1 and 3 only
Consider the following statements: 1. Most of the world's coral reefs are in tropical waters. 2. More than one-third of the world's coral reefs are located in the territories of Australia, Indonesia and Philippines. 3. Coral reefs host far more number of animal phyla than those hosted by tropical rainforests. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: 1, 2 and 3
Which one of the following National Parks lies completely in the temperate alpine zone?
Answer: Valley of Flowers National Park
The "Miyawaki method" is well known for the:
Answer: Creation of mini forests in urban areas
The insect order comprising butterflies and moths.
A species whose presence, absence or abundance reflects the condition of its habitat and gives early warning of environmental change.
Dense, multi-storeyed rainforest with year-round leaf cover; Dehing Patkai holds India's longest continuous lowland stretch of it.
Popular name for the Dehing Patkai rainforest, from its density and continuity.