Kolkata: ZSI has added 709 new records to its faunal database over the past year, pushing the nation’s total known faunal diversity to a staggering 1,05,953 species. The breakthrough reinforced India’s position as one of the world’s 17 megadiverse nations. Among the fresh discoveries, Bengal emerged as the country’s second-biggest hotspot for new biodiversity findings, registering 76 new species and trailing only behind Kerala.
Marking over a century of pioneering contributions to wildlife exploration, the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) celebrated its 111th Foundation Day on Tuesday with the launch of the three-day Animal Taxonomy Summit–2026 (ATS 4.0).
The summit, to be held till July 2, was inaugurated on Tuesday by the Union minister for environment, forest and climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, alongside Bengal’s finance minister Swapan Dasgupta and Bengal’s environment and forest minister Manoj Oraon.
“Scientific documentation of India’s rich diversity of creatures is crucial for conservation, as the conservation of any species is possible only when it is correctly identified and its scientific record is prepared,” Yadav said during his inaugural address. “The work of the ZSI has been crucial in our understanding, preserving, and widely establishing the importance of this unique natural heritage.”
Of the 709 additions to the national database, 483 are species entirely new to science, while 226 are species recorded in India for the first time.
To celebrate Bengal’s ecological prominence, Yadav unveiled several critical, region-specific publications, including Fauna of West Bengal, Faunal Diversity of Dry Deciduous Forests of West Bengal, and a dedicated study on the Faunal Diversity of Protected Areas of West Bengal, covering the Bethuadahari, Bibhutibhushan, Ramnabagan, Ballavpur, and Raiganj wildlife sanctuaries.
In a massive stride toward digital conservation, the ZSI launched Version 3.0 of the Fauna of India Checklist. Spearheaded by ZSI director Dhriti Banerjee and compiled by a collaborative network of 185 taxonomic experts, the updated repository indexes 105,953 species and subspecies across 121 taxon-specific inventories. According to the checklist, insects — specifically beetles, moths, and bees — represent the highest diversity within the registry, while fishes dominate the vertebrate category. The database will now be updated annually to provide real-time relevance for global researchers.
Additionally, the event marked the debut of the PaleoIndia Portal, a groundbreaking digital platform developed jointly by the ZSI and the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM), Chennai. “Utilizing dynamic maps from the Geological Survey of India (GSI), the portal maps the spatial distribution of fossil fauna across all 28 States and 8 Union Territories. It houses data on over 5,000 specimens ranging from ancient Mammalia and Reptilia to Ichnofossils. Crucially, the portal features a real-time data upload system designed to accept citizen science contributions to help crowdsource the preservation of India’s paleontological history,” said Banerjee.