Tiwari, Sagendra

It is widely acknowledged that Nepal is one of the rich biological treasure chests of South Asia. There are several "hotspots" of biodiversity - areas of high species richness and species diversity, as well as high levels of rare, endangered and endemic species of plants and animals. Efforts towards developing sustainability generally demand an in-depth understanding of the diverse life-forms in nature and their inter-dependence for survival and growth.

Biological diversity faces many threats throughout the world. One of the major threats to native biological diversity is caused by Invasive Alien Species (IAS) which can damage or replace native animal and plant populations, as well as the health of our ecosystems. The impacts of IAS are immense, insidious and usually irreversible. The scope and cost of biological alien invasives is global and enormous in ecological, environmental and economic terms.

The National Register of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (NRMAP) was put together in the year 2000 to assist His Majesty’s Government of Nepal in building up a national register of biological diversity. It provided a format to integrate taxonomic information with details of medicinal properties and uses documented in Nepal’s Ayurvedic texts and ethnobotanical literature.