In a rapidly developing economy, like India, often development plans over look the need to conserve or protect key biodiversity areas. This has not only led to the erosion of our natural wealth, but has often led to long and expensive advocacy battles to protect the last remaining wilderness zones in the country. To ensure both development needs, that meet people's aspirations, and conservation agenda are met, there is an immediate need to identify and prioritise areas that should to be set aside to ensure long term survival of our biological wealth. One of the major hurdles in achieving this objective is the lack of a centralised repository of biological information, as well as areas inhabited and maintained to meet human needs. The data required to do this assessment is readily available with research institutions, government organisations, national and international portals. They exist as raster and vector, and with and without spatial information and spatial attributes. 
The main objective of this project will be to compile existing data sources available with various agencies and make them available on a platform that will facilitate in identifying and prioritisation of the terrestrial ecosystems in India. Priority areas will be identified using socio-economic and biodiversity criteria that will be finalised through discussions with experts in the field of conservation.