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are called as Atavika or Adivasi, in general, and are
forest dwellers or forest dependant communities.
The collective knowledge of these communities
about the biodiversity around them is called Ethno
biological knowledge, and it is very ancient in India.
It describes how people of a particular culture and
region make use of indigenous plants and animals.
Ethno biological knowledge that accumulated over
generations help people protect their health and
nutrition and mange their habitats (Laird, 2002).
The possibility that traditional knowledge may be
rapidly and widely lost in response to the growing
economic strength of India has become a major
concern of scholars and policy makers. This
concern emerges from the presumed link between
traditional knowledge, the religious beliefs, cultural
and social attributes of human societies have
substantial influence on biodiversity conservation.
In India, there are biological species closely
interlinked with religious and other ancient
traditions. The recent thrust on biodiversity
conservation and sustainable utilization has
generated interest from the part of conservation
experts and policy makers on the importance of
traditional use of the resources. But, there is no
clear strategic plan exist on how to protect such
knowledge and culture to help conservation of
biodiversity on a long term basis, particularly in
view of rapidly changing culture and life style of
people of India. The traditional uses that are built
up from generations of knowledge and experiences
often proved to be authentic to believe and
followed upon to emulate a strategy for sustainable
conservation methods.
In the Indian wisdom, a tree had been positioned
above all those values that nature bestowed on to
humans. Indian traditional wisdom show practical
and technical uses for tree management in a given
rural landscape and also offers a glimpse of forms
of social and cultural representations concerning
trees. In the ancient Hindu scripture in India, trees
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