The Western Ghats also known as the SahyadriMountains, is a mountain range running along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, from Kerala to Gujarat. It separates the Plateau from a narrow coastal plain running down to the Arabian Sea. It is 1600 km long with the average elevation of 1200 metres and covers about 60,000 Square Kilometres. It is considered one of the world’s ten ‘hottest bio-diversity hotspots’, with over 5000 species of flowering plants, 139 mammal species, 508 bird species and 179 amphibian species of which at least 325 are considered globally threatened.