Area
150,000 ha
TEK COMMUNITIES
Rabha, Khasi, Garo
Material
Borduar Eri Silk, Muga
SPECIES
Samia Ricini, Borduar ecotype
KBA / IBA
Deepor Beel, Chandubi, Nongkhyllem
WILDLIFE SANCTUARY
Deepor Beel WS, Nongkhyllem WS
RAMSAR SITE
Deepor Beel
The Kamrup Khasi landscape is home to the Rabha, Khasi and Garo communities, who govern it through traditional ecological knowledge. In Chandubi and its adjoining areas, the Reserve Forests are protected by village customary law: each village designates its own territorial boundaries and enforces its own rules over the forest within them.
The landscape contains 3 Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA), 3 Important Bird Areas (IBA), 2 Wildlife Sanctuaries, and 1 Ramsar site.
Kamrup Khasi landscape is one of the richest documented habitats for wild silk-producing insects in the region. The community forests of Chandubi and adjoining areas host six recorded species, among them are Wild Eri Silk (Samia canningi), the semi-domesticated Borduar ecotype of Eri Silk (Samia ricini), Wild Muga Silk (Antheraea assamensis), and Wild Tasar Silk (Antheraea mylitta).
The communities of this landscape are among the first known to have domesticated Eri silk. The Borduar ecotype of Samia ricini, native to this landscape, shows the greatest genetic diversity among all sampled ecotypes. Knowledge and techniques of silkworm rearing and silk weaving have been transmitted across generations and remain a cornerstone of cultural identity for these communities
Chandubi and its adjoining areas, within the greater Kamrup Khasi landscape, constitute one of the largest remaining continuous habitats of the Hoolock Gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) in the world. The 7WEAVES Primate Project, inaugurated in 2022, catalysed a community-led conservation initiative by the Pub Rajapara forest village community. Named as Holou'r Baat - the Hoolock Gibbon Corridor, the initiative works to identify, protect, and maintain traditional corridor movements so that fragmented habitat patches remain ecologically connected and faunal dispersal across the landscape is sustained. Since 2024, the community has identified and demarcated the historical route of Hoolock Gibbons between the Mayong and Borduar Reserved Forests and is actively maintaining forest canopy continuity to facilitate their movement.
The indigenous fishing community of Deepor Beel has practised active wetland management independently for generations through the Deepor Beel Panchapara Samabai Samity. Traditional ecological knowledge guides the spatial stratification of the wetland, the design of fishing gear, and seasonal management protocols. This framework has sustained approximately 825 families who are directly dependent on the wetland for their livelihood. The same body of traditional knowledge structures habitat conditions that support large congregations of resident and migratory avifauna, a function formally recognised through the wetland's designation as a Ramsar site.
