In North East India, people are plucking a carnivorous plant to extinction

High up in the majestic hills of India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya lies an elusive and unusual carnivore: a pitcher plant. The species is known popularly as “monkey cups” because the animals were observed drinking rainwater from these tropical pitchers.

Over the past few decades, wild populations of the species have been declining due to threats from human activities, mainly extensive mining, shifting cultivation, and excessive collection.

While various initiatives have been implemented to conserve the plant, success hinges on the efforts of local communities.

Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants that attract, kill and digest insects. The plants have evolved modified leaves consisting of jug-like pitchers, which function as pitfall traps that ‘hunt’ prey, mainly insects that curiously approach the pitcher rims and end up falling inside. Often unable to escape the slippery inner walls and sticky fluid inside the pitcher, the unfortunate victims die and enzymes at the bottom of the pitcher digest them to release nutrients needed by the plant.

India’s only known pitcher plant species Nepenthes khasiana Hook. f., is an evergreen shrub considered endemic to Meghalaya. But in 2016, it was reported in Dima Hasao district in the neighbouring state of Assam. It is mostly distributed in Meghalaya’s west and east Khasi Hills, west...

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